


Future Perfect

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: “I only show the truth,” the creature said. “The truth of the future. How you feel about it is all your own.”“What future?” Buffy demanded. “What are you talking about?”The demon smiled. “You’ll see soon enough.”





	1. Present Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by ZabJade and Bewildered. Banner by Pixiecorn. Thanks guys!  
> Not all warnings apply to all situations. You'll see what I mean.

 

_The_ ** _present perfect_** _tense is used to indicate a link between the present and the past. “We have been together for some time now.”_

_ The  _ **_ future perfect _ ** _ tense refers to a completed action in the future. When we use this tense we are projecting ourselves forward into the future and looking back at an action that will be completed some time later than now, e.g. “We will have gone.” “Will they have gone?” “She won’t have gone." _

 

 

 Present Perfect   


 

   “Suicide is not contagious.”

   “It sure seems to be catching these days,” Buffy said, glancing around.

   The Saturday Market was still setting up around them in the growing light. Spike had a blanket under his arm against the certain dawn, casting an eye over the booths and tents that were being erected in the pre-dawn like ghosts of wonder. 

   “Look. I know how being suicidal works. It’s very, very personal,” Spike said.

   “Yeah, I get that. But that doesn’t stop the fact that this market has had a rash of clear suicides in and around it, every single week.”

   Spike shook his head. “They can’t be suicides. It’s got to be a demon or a monster or something.”

   “Self-inflicted, every one of them,” Buffy said. “Poison, overdose, gunshots, off bridges or buildings.”

   “I know, but it couldn’t just be the existential dread of home-made knick-knacks and farm-grown produce.” He glanced at a potter who was arranging various vases and mugs on a folding table. “Induced by something means it’s not suicide.” 

   “Which is fine for the priests, but we need to help the police,” Buffy pointed out. “They don’t care about semantics, only results. They sent two investigators, and they both killed themselves that day. And it was definitely self-inflicted.”

   “And we ruled out a spell?”

   “Yeah, Willow sent me a text. No spellwork.”

   “You mean no witchy spellwork,” Spike said. “Which tells me demon.”

   “I was thinking curse. Cursed object or mirror or statue or something.”

   “You and your curses.” Spike smirked. “I think you just like them or something.”

   “You’re the one always looking for demons to kill.”

   “Like you don’t, slayer-mine?”

   “Okay, what about a bet?” Buffy asked. “I bet curse, you bet demon. Whoever’s right makes breakfast?”

   “Hardly fair. You have yet to figure out the perfect balance of burba weed to cumin,” Spike said. “Whereas I have sorted a perfect waffle recipe with a minimum of fuss.”

   Buffy rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to taste your blood to make sure it’s spiced right!”

   “And I keep telling you, you should try it,” he said.

   “Ew!”

   “Lots of protein and minerals.”

   “Ew, ew!” Buffy squealed and mock ran away from Spike, hunching her shoulders with exaggerated disgust.

   “It’s low fat!” he insisted, chasing after her. “Hydrating!”

   “Help!” Buffy called out, not very loudly. “Disgusting vampire is going to poison me! Help!”

   Spike caught her and held her shoulders, grinning at her. “I’ve got better things to do with your mouth than that.”

   “Do you?” Buffy said, gazing into his eyes.

   He held his tongue behind his teeth for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, before bending to kiss her.

   “Ah, young love,” said a fond voice behind Buffy. She turned away from Spike’s kiss and found a young woman standing by a tent with a stylized hand, palm out, painted on the front panel. She was dressed like Tara used to dress, heavily covered but sort of flowing with scarves and things. She had warm brown eyes, and she smiled. “You two look like just the kind of people who could use my services.”

   “Do we, now?” Spike said.

   “You do. I can tell your fortune, foresee your future, give you the answers you seek.”

   “Actually, we do need an answer,” Buffy said. “We’re looking for some kind of odd object that people might have come in contact with. Something that might give off... oh... a miasma of pure evil?”

   “Or, you know, one of the nastier psy-demons,” Spike added. “If you happen to know in which tent one of those might be lurking.”

   “You think there’s a demon in the Saturday Market?”

   “There might be,” Buffy said. “Or something. We’re just... looking. Surely you’ve sensed something, if you’re here every week?”

   The fortuneteller looked at her. “Why me?” 

   “Well. Psychic. Fortunes. You can’t be entirely insensitive to stuff like that.” 

   She smiled. “I’m usually a little better at long-term fortunes than with what’s going to happen, say, tomorrow,” the young fortuneteller said. “But if you come inside, I’ll see what I can do.” She held open the flap on her tent, revealing an interior lush with Indian cotton hangings and thick with incense. “I’d be happy to help where I can.” 

   “What do you think? Demon?” Buffy asked Spike in a low voice.

   “Definitely,” he said as they followed.

   “Psy-demon?”

   “Can’t tell, she’s covered her scent with the incense. She must have a made a bed of the stuff.”

   “So what is your interest in this?” asked the fortuneteller as they ducked inside. “Are you looking to increase your powers, or just cause as much evil as you can?”

   “Excuse me?”

   The fortuneteller turned and glared, and her hands shot out of her sleeves, her fingers long and diaphanous, gripping around Spike and Buffy’s wrists with wire-like strength. “You’re a vampire,” she said, glaring at Spike. “And  _ you’re _ not just your regular market goer,” she added to Buffy. “What do you want with me?”

   Buffy tried to shake her hand free to get at the scythe over her shoulder, but the fortuneteller jerked, yanking her closer.

   “People are dying,” Spike snapped. “We take exception to that.”

   “It’s nothing to do with me,” the fortuneteller said. “I’ve never killed a soul.” She stopped and looked twice at Spike. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

   “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “Murderer,” the demon said. “Both of you. Murderers.”

   “It doesn’t matter,” Buffy snapped. “Look, we’re not here to kill you if you’re not the kind of demon that eats people. But something here at this market is driving people to death, and I think you know what it is.” She pulled at the demon’s tendrils, trying to free herself. “Or it’s you,” she added, getting more certain by the moment that it probably was. “So if it’s not you, get talking, and tell us what’s doing it.” 

   “Life,” the fortuneteller said. “That’s all it is that drives people. Life.” The wire fingers were creeping up their arms now, twisting around their flesh, sliding up beneath their clothes. “Their own… doomed… life….” 

   “Buffy!” Spike reached for her hand. Buffy took it, and their combined strength managed to pull them closer together, though the fortuneteller was trying to pull them apart.

   “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Buffy demanded. 

   “I show them their futures,” the demon said. “What they do with that knowledge is up to them.”

   “What for?”

   “Why not?” the demon asked. 

   “I think I heard of these,” Spike grunted, fighting against the tendrils. “It’s one of them buggers who feed on emotion. Like a succubus.”

   “This is not a succubus!” Buffy snapped. The creature was anything but sexy. 

   “There’s more emotions than lust, more energies than sexual. You feeding off life?” he demanded of the demon. “Rage? Despair?”

   “I only show the truth,” the creature said. “The truth of the future. How you feel about it is all your own.”

  “What future?” Buffy demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll see soon enough,” the demoness said. And her wirelike fingers inched up through their collars and over their faces. A moment later a stabbing web had infected the corners of their eyes, and the future vision was all they could see.

 


	2. Lingered

_She Will Have_

 

_Lingered._

 

 

 

   Spike wakes up beside her, his blue eyes flickering open in the diffused light from the white painted windows. Buffy is lying in bed beside him, mostly just gazing at him. There was nothing else she wanted to do. She gently touches his brow, his eyes still heavy with sleep, and he sighs.

   “Morning.”

   It is morning. Barely morning. He’s been in bed since sunrise at five, but he doesn’t sleep long, or well. He rolls away from her, dragging his pale, still muscular body to a sitting position, running his hand through his hair. He stopped bleaching it long ago. Lately it’s been a little too long, but not long enough to pull back, instead framing his face in butterscotch colored curls that she wishes she could bury her nose in. They look so soft. She scootches up behind him and leans against his back. He makes a small noise in his throat at the contact and rubs his face, still sleepy.

   He hoists himself from the bed as if his body is ten times heavier than it is, and stumbles across the room as if drunk. He goes to pull some blood from the fridge.

   He still makes her coffee every morning. He never drinks any of it himself. While the coffee machine is running, he warms his blood up in the microwave, tapping his foot as he waits for it to beep. He pours her coffee and sets it on the table for her, then sits down at his own seat, his feet up beside her on her chair.

   She drinks in the warmth and reality of the coffee, huddled close over it as it rests on the table. They spend a lot of time together like this, in peaceable silence. There’s no need to discuss anything. They know each other as well as it’s possible to know anyone. There’s nothing that needs to be said.

   Nothing that can be said, anyway.

   “Another year,” Spike says.

   “Already?”

   “Another whole year.”

   She broods over her coffee silently for a moment. She doesn’t know what to try and say.

   Finally the silence bothers her, and she gets up from the table. He’s left notes for himself by the phone. Sometimes she’s convinced he means for her to read them. Sometimes she wonders if his mind is just wandering these days. Immortality means there’s a lot of years packed into that undead noggin. Most elder vampires get a bit eccentric, like Kakistos or the Master. Maybe random notes and undrunk coffee are going to be his way of going that direction.

   “I see Monica’s coming over,” she says, glancing over the notes. “And isn’t Wood coming by with the new slayer?”

   His only response is a noncommittal grunt over his blood.

   “You should get out,” she says to him. “Train the new girl, maybe, or find some demon to slay.”

   Spike rubs his eyes.

   “You don’t look so good.”

   “I’m okay,” he says, half muttering into his hand. “It’s okay, I’m okay.”

   “You’re not okay,” Buffy insists. “You’re exhausted, you don’t sleep, you barely eat, and what do you do all day?”

   He gives a world weary sigh. Then he does what he does every day. Turn on daytime television and stare at it.

   Buffy wishes she could grab the damn remote and throw it at his stubborn head.

   Instead she curls up beside him on the couch and puts her head in his lap. Spike’s hand sneaks down and rests on his leg, close behind her shoulder. It’s comforting.

   “So help me, I think House of Mercy is starting to grow on me,” she mutters as his latest favorite soap opera comes on. “The embedded advertisements are annoying, though,” she adds, as one of the characters starts talking hamfistedly about how healthful her cereal is to her cheating lover as he hastens out the door before her blind twelve year old daughter comes down and catches them together.

   It was lame, but Spike being lame was insanely cute.

   Monica doesn’t usually knock on the door, but Spike hears when she’s coming as she opens the downstairs door. He hits record on the satellite so he can catch the rest of his show later, and sits more upright as the young witch pushes into the room. 

   “So, I got you some more blood,” she says. Her red hair is damp from what must be rain outside. Their apartment is so isolated that Buffy hasn’t had any idea that there was still weather in the world. “Sorry, I couldn’t get pig this time, you’re going to have to make do with cow.”

   “S’fine,” Spike says, hoisting himself off the couch.

   “Hi, Buffy,” Monica adds.

   “Hi.”

   Monica doesn’t look at her, but Buffy hadn’t expected her to.

   Spike, however, cringes. “Wish you wouldn’t do that,” he says.

   “What?” Monica says. “Mom says I shouldn’t just ignore her.”

   Spike ignores this, and changes the subject. “How is ol’ Willow, anyroad?”

   “She’s fine. The coven is keeping her energies contained if she lashes out. Devon’s nice, she says. When she remembers me.”

   “Madness is tough when you got power.”

   “She’s not mad, she’s just battling dementia,” Monica says. “Early-onset, magic-induced dementia.” 

   “She could have fought it here.”

   “And blown up half the city when she forgot where her keys were, or ran into Buffy in one of her fits? That would have been hilarious.”

   Spike frowns. “Just sometimes I wish she’d stayed here, is all.”

   Monica stares at him. “You know she couldn’t, Spike. She misses you, but Buffy was driving her crazy.”

   “That was not my fault,” Buffy insists.

   “Too many contrary energies,” Monica goes on. “Between you and her, the vampire stuff and Buffy’s... you know....”

   “I know, I know,” Spike says.

   “I mean, living here? Buffy’s here  _ all the time _ .”

   “What, you want her to go outside?”

   Monica sighed. “I know she can’t. It’s just that it was just too much for a witch who isn’t all there in the head. It’s not fair to even want that.”

   Spike closes his eyes. “Just would have been easier with some friends of her own generation around, you know?”

   “Yeah. But it’s been a lot of years now, and... well....”

   “People age and change. I know that.” He sinks down against the wall, his face heavy.

   “Just not you two.”

   His head hangs.  

   “You know... I can still take care of it.”

   “Don’t.”

   “It would be easy,” Monica says. “Just call Xavier or some of the girls. Light a few candles. It’s not that hard a spell. Wouldn’t be a big deal. And then you could finally—”

   “Would you just let it go?” Spike snaps. “If that’s what Buffy wants, she’ll let us know.”

   “Thank you,” Buffy says.

   “Would she really?” Monica asks. “I really think sometimes that you’ve just fallen into a groove or something, and I don’t think you’re ever gonna get out. And what if something happens to me? How are you going to get blood?”

   “I’d figure something out. Maybe go out and get it myself, it’s not like I’m a prisoner in here.”

   “Isn’t it?” Monica asks.

   Buffy had been wondering the same thing herself, as he slowly stopped sleeping, or reading, or leaving. But she just can’t address it herself. She doesn’t even know how she’d go about it.

   “It’s not like I don’t do anything,” Spike says. “Wood’s bringing one of the girls by this evening.”

   “Training?”

   “Sort of. Just to see if she can sense me.”

   “But no fight training?”

   “Wood can handle that bollocks himself,” Spike says darkly.

   “You used to like training the girls,” Monica says. “I remember. When I was little.”

   “That was before.”

   There’s a long, long silence. “What are you waiting for?” Monica finally bursts out. “Nothing’s going to change, at this rate you’re going to be wasting away in this apartment forever!”

   “Then that’s where we are!” Spike yells at her, so vehement his fangs come out. Monica jumps. She hasn’t seen that happen much in her thirty-some years. “Just. Let it. Go,” he says with a growl.

   “Funny,” Monica says, shrugging her coat back on. “That’s just what I was going to say to you.” She opens the door with a flourish which would put her mother’s dramatic gestures to shame. “Bye, Buffy,” she adds. 

   Spike jumps after her, catching the door as she tries to slam it. “Wait, pet, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I just....” He sighs, sad. His fangs go down.

   Monica pauses. “I’ll be back Friday with more blood,” she says with a resigned tone. “I don’t like this, though.”

   “None of us do,” Buffy says quietly.

   Monica looks toward Buffy and frowns. “I’m sorry,” she says, to herself, to Spike. It’s clear she really is. “I know it’s hard.” 

   All Spike does is shake his head, helplessly.

   Monica waits, and then heads down the hallway, leaving Spike standing in the doorway. For a long moment Buffy almost thinks he might follow her, but no. He stands in that doorway as if he needs an invitation to go outside.

   Then he closes the door and goes back to the couch.

   “She’s right, you know,” Buffy says as he turns on the television again. “At this rate, this  _ will _ be forever.” She sits down beside him on the couch. “I should go,” she says. “I should stop this before it gets even worse.”

   Spike shakes his head. “I’m not ready for you to not be here,” he says quietly.

   “Will you ever be?”

   He doesn’t answer that one. She didn’t expect him to.

   The sun has set before someone knocks on the door. Spike turns the tv off again and hoists himself up to answer it. Robin Wood stands there, his hand on the shoulder of a young girl.

   She’s young, for a potential. No more than thirteen. The Slayer Gift is wandery these days, as if the spell that granted all the potentials their power is confused by the deaths of slayers and the births of new girls. For the most part, most potentials start dreaming by twelve, and their powers activate at sixteen. For the most part. Some aren’t called until nearly eighteen, and some have been called as young as twelve. Some potential girls start dreaming in early childhood. Some potential girls never get called at all, leading some to believe that the Gift will eventually settle back down to one girl in all the world.

   It doesn’t matter much. They all need trained, if they can be found, so they can understand what’s happening to them, even if it only ever manifests as disturbing dreams of vampires.

   This girl is shy. Robin Wood stares heavily at Spike as he stands in the doorway. “May we come in?” he says, his grey hair and beard grave as a stone.

   “Of course. Who’s this?”

   “Introduce yourself,” Wood says gently to the girl he has brought to meet Spike.

   She mutters something.

   “Speak up,” Wood insists.

   “She said Sonia,” Spike says. “I heard her.” He bends down and holds out a gentle hand. “I’m Spike.”

   The girl stares at the hand, and then nervously takes it. She lets go quickly at his coldness.

   “Sonia has never seen a vampire before,” Wood says.

   Spike smiles. “Well, I’m a good starter. Pleased to meet you, Sonia.”

   “Now,” Wood says, going into training mode. “You’ll see, Sonia, that Spike here looks like a perfectly ordinary human man. But you noticed when you touched his hand how cold he was? They don’t produce heat. Do you notice anything else different about him?”

   Sonia stares up into Spike’s face. Buffy senses some intelligence in her eyes, but she looks away quickly, shaking her head.

   “If you would be so kind as to reveal yourself?” Wood says formally. Everything Wood does with Spike is formal. Spike figures that’s fair, though with anyone else he’d have taken exception to the term “reveal yourself.”

   “It’s okay,” Buffy says, feeling the child out. “She can take it.”

   Spike only releases his fangs after Buffy’s assessment. “Now. Notice the brow ridges,” Wood says. “Those are the strongest indicator from far away....” He went on pointing out differences in Spike’s physiology, asking him to reveal and conceal his fangs, discussing the potential in his fingernails, addressing the possibility of thrall. The girl goes from staring at Spike to looking pointedly and shyly away.     

   Then Wood’s cell phone rings. He answers it. “Wood.”

   Spike can hear another voice over the phone, saying something about another potential.

   “Really? Where?” The voice starts to speak, but Wood cuts him off. “Wait a moment.” He glances at Spike. “If you’ll excuse me. I need to take this call.” He steps out of the room, presumably hoping Spike doesn’t hear about the latest potential. Wood uses Spike for training, but he still doesn’t trust him very much.

   “He doesn’t like you,” Sonia says candidly the moment Wood is out of earshot.

   A sly smile sneaks up Spike’s face. So. Sonia is talkative, just not around Wood. Doesn’t surprise him. “I don’t like him much.”

   “I thought you were a good vampire?”

   “I try to be,” Spike says. “But your Watcher there tried to kill me once, so I don’t trust him very far.”

   “He says you’re still evil underneath. He’s seen it.”

   “Yeah, well, I killed his mum. He’s got a right to be a bit brassed off over it.”

   Sonia frowns at him. “He said you did that, but I didn’t believe it. Why?”

   Spike shrugs. “She was a slayer. I was a vampire. It’s what we did. Part of how the game was played back then.”

   “Not anymore?”

   Spike grins at her. “Not with me.”

   She stares at him, curious. “They tell me you loved a slayer, once.”

   Spike’s smile softens. “Still do.”

   “Still? Who?”

   “The great Buffy Summers,” he says. “I love her terrible.”

   “But isn’t she dead?”

   Spike shakes his head. “Let me tell you a secret.” He leans in close. “She’s standing right behind you.”

   Sonia jumps and whirls, and is no less discomfited to see no one there.

   “A bit to your left, actually, Spike,” Buffy says.

   He doesn’t hear that bit, though.

   “What do you mean?” Sonia asks.

   “Well. Sometimes when people die they don’t go on. They... linger,” Spike says. “Buffy’s still here, in this apartment. With me.”

   “You mean she’s a ghost?”

   “Something like that. Yeah.”

   Sonia stares in awe at Spike.

   “Don’t you hold any prejudice against ghosts, now. A ghost can be a person just like you and me. She’s just a soul without a body.” He chuckles. “There was a time there when I was a body without a soul.” He glanced around. “We make it work.” 

   “And she stayed here?”

   “Yeh.”

   Sonia frowns. “Do all people who die stay as ghosts?”

   “No. Just those who don’t go on.”

   “So why didn’t she go on?”

   “You’d have to ask her that.”

   “I wasn’t ready to go,” Buffy says.

   “If I did, would she answer?” Sonia asks.

   “Not in so many words,” Spike says. “But I feel her sometimes. I sometimes know if she’s saying something, or when she’s there beside me. Witches can sense her. And she can move stuff if she really wants to.”

   “Can she?”

   “Not real often,” Spike says. “It takes emotion to move things as a ghost, and.... Well. She just doesn’t bother much.”

   He didn’t say the truth. That as time passed, there was less and less emotion, and fewer and fewer reasons to affect the physical world.

   “How do I know you’re not pulling my leg?” Sonia asks.

   Spike smirks. “Buffy?”

   “She asked for it,” Buffy says, concentrates real hard, and pulls on the potential’s left leg. Only her pants leg jiggles a bit, as if someone was tugging on it, but it’s enough to make Sonia jump.

   “That’s... oh, that’s real!” Sonia wriggles with excitement. “Oh, this is amazing. I have so much to ask her! Why did she share power? What was the worst thing that ever happened? How can I learn to be strong as her?”

   “Calm down, little bit,” Spike says. “She can’t answer those sorts of questions. But if you want to talk to her, now’s your chance.”

   “Why only now?”

   “Before your watcher comes back. He can’t know.”

   “Why not?”

   “Because he might want to banish her,” Spike says. “And I can’t let that happen.”

   “Why not?”

   Spike shrugs. “Don’t know where she’d be banished to. Or if it’s some place I can’t follow.”

   And there is the real reason she lingers. And the reason he remains. The reason he won’t let anyone think of sending her away, or taking care of it or letting it go. He can’t let her go. Not if she’ll end up somewhere he can’t be with her.

   “Um. Hello, Buffy,” Sonia says formally. “I’m glad to meet you. I’m Sonia. Um... I... I hope... I hope I’ll do you proud. That I’ll be worthy of the slayer lineage. I-I try to be.”

   “You’re a treasure, little bit,” Spike says quietly. “Anyone should be able to see that.”

   After a while Wood comes back and finishes the vampire identification lesson. He nods a formal goodbye to Spike, but Sonia jumps forward to give the bemused vampire a brief hug.

   After they leave, Spike stands in the doorway for a moment, before his shoulders sag, and he goes back into the apartment.

   “I liked her,” Buffy says.

   “I liked her,” Spike says to himself.

   Buffy cringes. “I didn’t mean to trap you here,” she says. “I didn’t mean to make us just... stop... like we have. I just... I wasn’t ready to go.”

   Spike is silent for a long moment, then draws in a deep breath. “You died too young, pet,” he says quietly. “Could you even move on now?”

   Buffy had long forgotten the way to open whatever door had been available for her when she’d first died. Besides. She’s just like him. “I don’t want to leave you.”

   Spike shakes his head and turns off the lights. He returns to the bedroom and curls up on his side of the bed. Buffy lays down beside him, and watches as his blue eyes finally flicker closed. He’ll be awake soon, but until then she’ll stay beside him. She never sleeps as a ghost. She lays there, mostly just gazing at him.

   There is nothing else she wants to do.

***

 

   “No!” Spike was the one who wrenched himself free of the vision first. He knew if he let it sink into his soul that he would start to believe it. And he knew better. “That’s just one future,” he insisted. “There’s no saying it would be the end, I know how this works.”   

   “Do you?”

   “The future isn’t set,” Spike said. “I lived with a seer for a century, it shifts, it twists. What you show might be true one day and total bollocks the next.”

   “You think so?” asked the fortuneteller. “Let’s see.”

   He kept struggling and finally grabbed Buffy’s hand – Buffy’s warm, living hand. She wasn’t gone. She wasn’t a ghost. She was real and alive and there with him. Who cared that she had an expiration date? She was there and he wasn’t going to let her go.

   His contact shook Buffy free of the vision. Reality struck her like a fist, and she was back in her real body again. “Oh, you bitch,” she growled at the demon.

   “Destiny,” said the demon. “I only follow the paths of destiny.”

   “I don’t give a damn about destiny!” Buffy released Spike now that she no longer needed him, and wrenched the vision-causing appendages out of her eyes. “I’m not dying any time soon.”

   “How do you know?” the demon asked. “Death hovers at your elbow, slayer. It sleeps in your bed. You positively  _ make love _ to death.”

   “Yeah, maybe I do,” Buffy snapped, wrestling with the wiry tendrils. They fought her, and wrapped her up, making her skin sting. “But that doesn’t mean I have to die.”

   “Not on my watch,” Spike snarled. He was vamped up and wrestling himself. “Fight it, love! They’re just visions. They mean nothing.”

   “They mean everything,” the creature hissed. “Do you think I make up your futures? It’s your life, it’s your destiny. It will be your own death.”

   “I’m not about to let her die,” Spike snapped. “I will not let that be our future. Never!”

   “Won’t you?” The creature smiled cruelly. “Well. What’s the alternative, vampire? She will die, one day. You’ll have to let her.” She flexed her arms, and the tendrils attacked again, stabbing viciously. “What else could you do?”

 


	3. Changed

 

_ She Will Have _

 

 

_ Changed _

 

 

 

   Buffy was curled up on the bed, her muscles occasionally rigid with agony, her breath shallow, her heart rate way too fast. God, it was inevitable at this stage, right? There was nothing Spike could do. Nothing the doctors could do, or magic, or anything. They’d gone through all the shouting and the blame and the questions and the  _ We can’t let this happen! _ They’d sorted out the magic and the prayers to the oracles and the one-more-chance-for-a-miracle gauntlets. Everything was either out of reach, impossible, or simply couldn’t be found. There was nothing to do now.

   Nothing but to sit and watch her die.

   Dawn was reading aloud when Spike came in. “ _ ‘It must be a dream, it must, it must,’ said Jill to herself. ‘I’ll wake up in a moment.’ But it wasn’t, and she didn’t. _ ” Spike slipped in beside her and pulled up his chair as she continued. She was reading the  _ Chronicles of Narnia _ , something Joyce had read to Dawn and Buffy when they were small. Dawn hadn’t wanted to start something Buffy had never read before. “What if she never gets to finish it?” she had said about it.

   Spike hadn’t wanted to argue. From the reference to Jill, Spike figured they were early in chapter two of  _ The Silver Chair _ . It was Dawn’s favorite. Spike was always partial to  _ The Dawn Treader _ , himself. It had lots of Edmund in it, and he was oddly fond of Edmund. He had an understandable soft spot for the redeemed.

   Buffy liked the first one. It resonated with her. Sacrifice.

   She was sacrificing herself now. Or she already had. Saving the world, as she always did, but she’d been wounded, and the death was creeping slow. Blaze of glory her final fight might have been, but wounds, poison, infection, whatever it was in the injuries was killing her, and there was nothing anyone could do. Not even Willow. There was nothing that could save her now that wasn’t as world-shattering as resurrecting her had been the first time. And Willow had learned her lesson there. The witch had all but made her ears bleed trying to sort out a cure, but she wouldn’t shatter the world for it.    

   Dawn was having trouble. Her eyes were red. She’d been crying again, and the passage she was on wasn’t helping. “ _ Crying is... is all right in its way while it lasts, _ ” Dawn read. “ _ But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still— _ ” She stopped and choked, then coughed, and forced herself to continue. “ _ —have to decide what to do. _ ”

   She stopped, biting her lip, and Buffy’s breath continued steady and ragged. She was only semi-lucid part of the time now.

    “Any change?” Spike asked.

   Dawn shook her head. “She keeps breathing,” she said. “She’ll....” She shivered. “She stops sometimes, and I get scared. But she keeps breathing.”

   “You go to bed,” Spike said. “It’s late. I’ll stay with her.”

   Dawn nodded and grabbed a tissue. They had taken to taking turns. The room was warm and homey and smelled of herbal incenses, but with Buffy lying in the bed it was frightening for all of them.

   Buffy in her death bed.

   Spike didn’t mind death. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was Buffy, it would be so normal. As always when he was alone in the room, he snicked off his boots and curled up in the bed beside her, holding her securely in his arms, feeling the heat of her life, the steady rhythm of her breath. But her breath wasn’t steady now, and her heartbeat was so, so fast....

   Buffy made a sound as Spike’s arm snuck around her, and she turned her head to face him. “Spike...” she whispered.

   “Here, love.”

   “Dawn was here just...?”

   “She just left. She was reading.”

   Buffy frowned. “I remember. Aslan....”

   “Yeah,” Spike said.

   “I like those books.”

   “They’re not bad.” Spike shrugged. “I always figure if you’re gonna have a Christian allegory, at least make it interesting, yeah?”

   “Did you read those when you were little?”

   Spike shook his head. “Too old,” he said. “Never read ‘em ‘til after I got the chip.” He brushed the hair out of her face. It was lank, and smelled of sweat. “I had a lot of free time on my hands, then.”

   “The chip....” Buffy murmured. “Saved you.”

   Spike gazed down into her pale face. “Did it?”

   “From me,” she said. Her hand moved listlessly but with determination toward his heart. “I should have staked you.”

   Spike chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “You probably should’ve.”

   Buffy took in a deep breath then and opened her eyes wide. For the first time in a long while, they looked bright. “Spike?” she whispered. “You know what’s happening?”

   Spike wanted to say no, but he was terribly afraid he knew. “Buffy, love....”

   “I don’t think there’s much longer to go, now. Been trying to hold out for a miracle from Willow, but....” She took in a breath. “No miracles.”

   “Oh, god....” Spike couldn’t hold his own sodding tears in. They brimmed up in his eyes and thickened in his throat until he tasted blood. “Oh, god, don’t.”

   Buffy blinked. She’d known she was dying for over a week now, and the last two days every time she was lucid she’d been making plans. She’d arranged for a Last Will and Testament through Giles. She’d made sure she’d had time with all of them. Whatever it was she’d shared with each of them was private.

   But every night Spike had curled up beside her, and mostly just watched her sleep. She hadn’t said anything to him that sounded like a goodbye.

   “Don’t,” she said, looking up at his tears. “Don’t be so sad. I’ll be okay.”

   “Buffy....”

   “I will. I know where I’m going.” She smiled slightly. “I’ve missed heaven.”

   The tears broke, and he actually sobbed. He’d mostly been able to keep this from her, but it was getting past the time when he could now.

   “Hey,” she said. “It’s okay.”

   “No,” he whispered. “Just don’t, just don’t....” He knew how stupid it was. He knew he couldn’t pray to Buffy as if he was praying to God and actually have her respond. She could rescue. She could save. She could defeat. But she wasn’t a god.

   Hell, he’d met enough gods in his day, he was pretty sure none of them could do sod all for this, either.

   She shook her head softly. “Nothing can stop that now, you know that. I’m dying.”

   “I know,” he whispered. “I know, just.... Oh, god, don’t leave me!” He held her fiercely and he could feel she was holding him back, but there was no strength in it.

   “I have to,” she whispered. “You know that.” She shivered against him, and then said something that terrified him. “But you don’t have to be alone.”

   “Don’t!” he snapped, angry now. “Don’t make some plea about moving on and letting go and grieving and finding someone else, doesn’t bloody work like that!” He shook his head. “Not for me.”

   “I know.”

   “I tried it,” he said. “I  _ tried _ moving on without you, I tried giving you up, I tried and all I got were oceans of salt and a slowly twisted mind and a heart like iron, right? Ripped up my soul when I didn’t even have one, don’t tell me I’ll just find someone else, all right? You’re a hell of an act to follow!”

   She laughed.

   “Don’t you laugh at me, bitch,” he muttered, more weary than angry. “Just let me hate this, right?”

   “You can hate it,” she said. “I hate it myself.”

   “Well... good!” Spike muttered, and nuzzled into her hair. Then he realized — “This is it, isn’t it? You already said goodbye to everyone else. This is my goodbye speech.”

   “Well... yeah,” Buffy said.

   “Bloody hell.”

   “Hung on long as I could,” she said.

   “I know.”

   “And I love you.”

   Spike grunted as if struck. “I know,” he whispered. “I love you, too. I always will.”

   “And that’s the trouble, isn’t it,” Buffy said. “Always. You’re immortal.”

   “I don’t have to be,” Spike said. “Dust isn’t so hard to find on a pretty, sunny world like this one.”

   She looked up at him. “That’s suicide.”

   “So?”

   Buffy stared at him. “Some people think suicide means you don’t go to heaven.”

   “I don’t think God’s that bloody petty,” Spike said. “‘Sides. Already dead. A vampire finally skipping off the mortal coil is just putting bug-all to rights, yeah?”

   Buffy shook her head. “But then who looks after Dawn?” she asked. “And the Scoobies and everyone? You need to stay and protect them.” She squeezed him. “Someone needs to save the world.”

   Spike growled low. “Can’t demand that,” he said. “I took that promise once, for Dawn, ‘cause you were dead. Not playing it again. Just let me do what I’m gonna do.”

   “And I’ll do what I’m gonna do,” Buffy said softly. “I’ll always love you, Spike,” she said against his skin. “I’ll look down on you from heaven, I promise.” She swallowed and shivered and she seemed... he couldn’t tell. Frightened, maybe? But she was the only person in the world sure of her place in heaven, she’d just been talking about it. She took several deep breaths then, and he could feel her hot breath against his throat. One. Two. Three. Then, “Don’t let me kill,” she whispered.

   Spike yelped. After her last whisper she’d actually bitten him. And not a seductive or even painful love bite, she bit  _ hard _ , bearing down on his throat like she would sever flesh. He pushed her off, an instinctual move, and stared down into her face in sudden horror. “Buffy, what are you...?” He gasped, bewildered, confused, his throat stinging. She’d bruised him, and actually had ripped some of his flesh, but only as he’d pushed her off. A tiny smear of his blood graced her upper lip.

   Buffy sagged. “I’m not strong enough, Spike. You have to hold still.”

   There was a long, long beat as Spike took in the implications of this. “Buffy... I’m not doing that. I’m not... I won’t....”

   “You’re not,” Buffy said. “I am.”

   “Buffy....”

   “Look,” Buffy said. “I never wanted to be turned, but I’m gonna die. I’m not trying to save myself. I know where my soul will go. But I don’t want to leave you.”

   “Buffy, without your soul, you’re not you!”

   “I know,” Buffy said. “I don’t want to leave you _ alone _ , I should have said.” She swallowed. She was not finding this easy. Her face was terrified, but she continued doggedly. “I’m dying. And that’s okay, I’m okay with that, but I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want you broken and I don’t want you to kill yourself. If I can leave a piece of me behind....” She swallowed again. “Then I’ll do it. You teach me... her. The vampire. You teach her not to kill, you make her act good. And she’ll love you, because I love you. That... that stays, doesn’t it?” She looked like a terrified little girl when she asked that. “You said that stayed for you?”

   “It can,” Spike said honestly. “If... if....” He teared up again. “It can go so wrong, though.”

   “If it goes wrong, stake the bitch, and we’ve lost nothing,” Buffy said. “But if it goes right... if after I go to heaven this body wakes up with any of me in it... then... you know... you won’t be alone.”

   Spike shook his head. “It won’t be you if you don’t have your soul.”

   “It won’t be me if I’m not a slayer, either,” Buffy said. “But it also won’t be you all alone.”

   And then she fell back against the pillows, and there were tears in her own eyes. “I don’t have the strength to fight you, Spike. If you can’t do it... then just be alone, I guess.” The tears fell into her ears.

   “I....”

   “I’m dying either way,” she said. “And I love you. So shut up.”

   Spike regarded her for a long time as her labored breathing went steadier. “Is that really what you want?”

   “No!” Buffy said, with clear venom, though it was weak. “I want to live for the next fifty years with you and think about... I don’t know. Surrogating fat grandchildren. Or fat great-nieces or something. But given the sitch....” She shook her head. “Best I can think of.”

   Spike considered this. “Okay,” he said quietly.

   Buffy looked up at him. “Okay?”

   “Okay. But not yet.”

   Buffy swallowed. “I don’t know when... I’ll....”

   “I will,” he said. “I can catch you even at the death rattle and it’ll work. When there’s no more time... if that’s what you want done with your....”

   He just couldn’t bloody say,  _ body _ .

   “Don’t miss,” Buffy whispered. “And if you do, don’t you dare walk into the sun.”

   “You just want to leave a bit of you behind to beat me up, Summers.”

   “Don’t you know it,” Buffy whispered. “I love you.”

   “Love you,” Spike whispered. He held her as warmly as possible. “Love you so, so much.”

***

__

   She slipped into a coma that night. Spike stopped leaving the room entirely. He stopped sleeping, stopped eating, stopped everything. He held the raggedly breathing human figure and listened to Dawn read, and Willow come in and pet her, and Giles come in and pretend he wasn’t crying, and Xander pop his head in, get uncomfortable, and disappear again within five minutes.

   It was night when the breathing finally started to slow down even more. That effect that had so scared Dawn, the pause in her breathing when she slept, that came heavier and heavier. It was after midnight on the third day of the coma when Spike knew it was time.

   He wrote a note and left it beside the bed.

_ Lock the door, and put a chair in front. Get a stake, and wait. Call Faith or another slayer if you decide you need back up. If she comes out without me, or all bitey, you know what to do.  _

_ Spike. _

_    P.S. Burn this. _

_    P.P.S. This is something she asked me for. _

   Then he gently rolled her wasted body into clean clothes, and made sure he looked presentable, because after all... in a while he was going to have to introduce himself to someone who would look to him as her sire.

   God, this was going to be messed up.

_ Given the sitch, _ he reminded himself.

   It wasn’t what he’d expected.

   Buffy had faded away to barely a waif, and he didn’t dare start with a blood draw. She was too close to death as it was. He considered his arm, but no, this was Buffy. She deserved his own throat.  _ I will make your neck my chalice.... _

   She hoped the demon who rose would remember she’d asked.

   Buffy’s room had knives. Of course it did. He grabbed a dagger from her weapons drawer before snuggling in beside her. He lifted her slightly and held her head to his throat. Her breathing stopped again for a moment, and he shuddered, hoping he hadn’t just missed his tiny window. But no, she drew in one more breath. He wasn’t too late. He quickly slashed at his throat, just a little, but it caught his carotid. Some blood spilled, but he quickly held Buffy to the wound and opened her mouth with his finger.

   Blood poured between her lips. And, as with every turning, just a taste on her tongue had a magical effect.

   She moved, latching on and suckling, as if the coma was broken. But it wasn’t yet. This was pure motor function, the first stage of the demon transformation. But after a minute at his throat Buffy’s eyes opened, and while she couldn’t stop herself from suckling, she was back. She was back! Just for a moment before the blood sent her soul away, he held a conscious Buffy in his arms.

   “Igke, Igke,” she murmured against his throat as she suckled. “Igke.”

   It took him only a moment to realize she was trying to say his name.

   “That’s it, pet. I listened,” he whispered into her ear. “I caught you in time, just take it in.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I’ll miss you.” He sobbed into her hair.

   Her arm went around him and she held him weakly. He let her lie back on the pillow, still latched onto his throat. The blood wouldn’t allow her the will to stop suckling, but making it easy, making it right. Making her last moments what she wanted.

   Her arm slid down his shoulder and a single finger caressed her own throat by his jaw. “You want the bite?” he whispered.

   “Eemph,” she hummed against his skin.

   He took that to mean  _ Please _ .

   She’d always loved the bite.

   “Right.” Spike vamped up and caressed her throat with his tongue. “I love you,” he whispered, his last words to her before biting down.

   Her blood tasted strange, weak and poisoned, but he sucked her in anyway, giving back as much of his own demonic venom as he could, filling her with whatever it was that made her love the bite so much. She relaxed beneath him and he just held her, let her feast as much as she wanted until he knew he was out of blood, but he never pushed her away. The more blood you give your offspring, the stronger they are when they wake. Buffy deserved to have the strongest demon possible birthed from her flesh.

   They stayed, locked together, for what seemed like hours, but probably wasn’t. Spike wasn’t sure. He was gladly letting her suck him dry, and he suffered moments of terror before he sucked more from her, as his body registered it was getting low on blood. The terror was kept at bay by Buffy’s, tainted as it was, and as he continued to suckle her own blood started to taste... different. The magic was already seeping through her veins. Like alcohol, the demonic magics could be absorbed instantly through the blood vessels, without needing to be digested first, and she was already starting to turn.

   It had never been like this before. He’d made a few minions in his time, but he didn’t much like to, (probably shades of half-remembering turning his mum). He had usually left most of the minion-making to Dru. This was different. It did seem more like when Drusilla had turned him, but she’d cut her breast, and had him suckle like a child, and he was screaming as he sucked, because she had a thing about it hurting. This was anything but painful, and the little sounds Buffy made were not screams. They were desperate, and she sounded sad.

   And then it ended. Her stomach was distended with blood, and her suckling slowed and then... her mouth slackened. That had never happened with any of his minions before, he’d always shoved them off. Not this time. She just....

   She had died.

   Spike’s sobs were all but silent as he rolled off her. Her face looked softly orgasmic, blood-tainted tongue touching her parted lips, her half-closed eyes shining, her expression gentle. He gently touched her face, shutting her eyes, closing her lips with his thumb, caressing the dead, bluish flesh. “Goodbye, love,” he whispered. “I’ll keep this body from doing anything you wouldn’t want done with it.”

   That was it, wasn’t it. She was in heaven. God....

   She was in heaven, and he was in hell.

   He lay down and curled the corpse into his arms. “And you,” he said to it. “You rest and change strong. I’ll be here to meet you when you wake.”

   He pulled the sheet over both of their heads, and spent a few, tortured minutes crying out his grief into her hair before he pulled himself together, and made himself hold his breath.

   He’d never been particularly good at this, but he realized... he’d never had a good reason before. Spike was always quite human in his ways, something Darla had scorned as weak. She took pride in being able to play the corpse for days. She’d tried to teach him and Drusilla. Dru had managed it, and eventually Spike had as well, but he hadn’t liked it. It made him woozy and uncomfortable, and he much preferred to breathe a little, even in his sleep, even if he supposedly didn’t need to. But there was something meditative in letting yourself just  _ be dead _ for a bit.

   He held his breath, stopped all movement, and let himself  _ be dead _ .

   Time went away. The moment when Dawn and Xander discovered them was something Spike was aware of, but wasn’t particularly concerned with. The sheet was pulled back from over their heads. There was crying, shouting in the background, Xander yelled at Spike to quit faking and get the hell up. He pulled on Spike’s arm, but apart from tightening his muscles to hold Buffy closer, he didn’t respond otherwise.

   “I get it,” Willow said. “He’s trying to be reborn with her.”

   “How do you know that?”

   There was a dark pause. “Because I almost just lay there and held Tara before the need for revenge rose,” she said. “He just wants to hold her until she comes back. I get it.”

   “But she’s not  _ coming back, _ ” Dawn said. “She’s dead! Isn’t her soul in heaven, then?”

   “Yeah,” Willow said. “Probably. I can check, actually.”

   There was another somewhat pointed pause as no one asked her why she hadn’t checked the last time Buffy had died.

   “But Spike said she asked for this. We need to respect that, right?”

   There was some kind of argument then as they discussed this. Willow knew Buffy’s worst fear was being a vampire, but they also all three believed that Spike wasn’t going to lie. There was some debate about just staking her (or actually both of them) now before they rose, just cut through the whole problem. But Spike had told them it was okay to stake her if she came out of the change bitey, and they agreed they’d only do that then, and talk to Spike first if she didn’t. Willow said something about calling Faith. Dawn threatened to stay and sit beside them watching the turning, but Xander talked her out of that, reminding her it was dangerous. And it was. None of them, not even Spike, knew what the demon would be like when it rose.

   He hoped, in his distant, dead space, that she wouldn’t end up like his mum.

   Buffy had been turned stronger than he’d turned his mum, though. Hopefully she’d be more than just evil.

   Eventually they left. Dawn paused, lovingly caressing each of their faces in turn with the back of her fingers. She took the sheet and placed it respectfully back over their heads. Then she closed and locked the door, just like Spike had asked.

   Spike lay curled around the corpse of the woman he loved and waited, breathless, for it to change into some kind of demon.

__

   ***

   Her eyes opened in pale darkness, something comfortingly covering her face, something else close and cold about her. It wasn’t a coffin — something told her dead darkness and a coffin would have been fitting — but she knew opening her eyes into brightness and openness would have been terrifying. She didn’t need to question what had happened. She remembered her life, she remembered vampires, she knew her final request had been granted.

   She remembered Spike turning her.

   The closeness around her was Spike’s strong arms, not the close walls of a coffin, and the darkness was a simple sheet, not six feet of smothering earth she had to fight her way through. But he still knew she’d want to open her eyes to darkness.

   She took in her first breath as a vampire, and knew two things instantly. The first was that she didn’t need it. Breath had always carried a relief and an instinct with it, a quiet and ever-constant need. She didn’t need breath. But it was also  _ amazing. _ A thousand smells that had never before been discernable to her flooded her nose, flowed into her mouth, startled her brain. Cotton, sweat, vampire, those were the strongest, beneath the sheet with her, but also tickling through the cotton was water — a half full glass by the lamp — ozone — the electricity pulsing through the walls — dust — old human skin — stale incense — at least two days old — and those were just the scents she could identify. There were hundreds of gentle whiffs of things she hadn’t yet learned to connect with an image. It was like being presented with an entire library of books she couldn’t read yet, when she’d only just learned the alphabet of scent.

   And her body ached to learn more.

   Among the other scents was one that did carry that sense of need that air used to hold. She knew already what it must be.

   BLOOD.

   There was blood on the floor, blood in the bathroom, blood on the weapons in her drawer. There was old blood on her nail clippers, diluted blood staining her clothes. She would never have been aware of this blood before, it wasn’t discernable to a human. They were just droplets, old but distinctly there, shining in her senses as if they were brilliant lights, bright out of the dark.

   And there was pulsing, fresh blood through the walls. She could smell it creeping from under the door, bodies, human bodies, living human bodies, pulsing with fresh blood that made saliva pool behind her fangs, ready lives, waiting lives, there for the slaughter....

   And she was ravenous.

   Her hand moved up and slipped the sheet away from her face.

   The arms that were already close around her tightened, and the body beside her drew in a deep breath. Sudden elation flooded through her as she remembered him, enough to distract her from the living blood outside the door — for now. “Spike!” She turned, beaming at him sunnily, her fangs glinting in her face.

   Spike stared at her through blue eyes dark with suspicion, but she didn’t care. She was too glad to wake up beside him. Oh, by the devil himself, he smelled like  _ power. _

   “Hello, there,” he said.

   “You caught me, I’m alive!” she said to him happily.

   Spike’s eyes softened a little, but he didn’t smile. “You’re undead,” he said quietly. “Pleased to meet you.”

   “Oh, shut up, you know me,” she said. “You sired me! I’m here, I’m yours, I’m real!” She squeezed him tightly, and he grunted a bit. She felt... stronger. Stronger even than she’d been as a slayer. She was delighted with it, with her body, the scents, even sights seemed clearer, and she positively _ loved _ her fangs. It was all she could do to keep from biting Spike with them right now and tear him to pieces, rip him up and spread him all over the walls, because she loved him so much, but that would probably piss him off, and he was her sire, and he deserved some respect, but she absolutely loved him, she wanted him between her teeth, and between her legs, and she wanted to kneel at his feet, or maybe twist his head off until he dusted, she wasn’t sure which. “I’m real!”

   “You sure are,” Spike said thickly.

   She pulled away, still beaming. “I love you!” she announced happily. “I love you, love you,  _ love _ you! Let’s go kill someone.”

   Spike’s hand on her arm tightened quickly, hard enough it hurt.

   “Ow.”

   “Stop that,” he said. “You listen, now. We’re not killing anyone.”

   “But I’m hungry,” she insisted. “And there’s people out there. I bet that’s Xander in the living room. He’d be easy to kill. Let’s go out and—”

   “I  _ said, _ ” Spike said more firmly. “No.”

   “Oh, right oh,  _ Master, _ ” she said mockingly. “Am I supposed to just obey?”

   He dug his nails in. “Yeah.” He drew in a breath through his nose and studied her face. “And I prefer Big Bad, if you’re gonna call me anything.”

   She rolled her eyes. “Right. You’re not gonna help.” She honestly couldn’t believe it. Some part of her remembered he didn’t kill, and why he didn’t kill, but the scents and sounds and just sheer power of  _ being _ insisted to her that Spike couldn’t really  _ mean _ it about giving up the evil. Evil was what they  _ were _ right? Killing was what they were supposed to  _ do _ . She moved her hand sensually down his side and went reaching for his crotch. “Not even if I give you what you want?”

   He grabbed her wrist, holding it away from his body, staring at her with a depth and a weight that suddenly hit her like a brick. A terrible, terrible realization struck her. Two, actually. One, that there was a soul peering out of those eyes, something heavier and stronger even than her newfound power, something she could no longer even fathom. And two....

   “I’m not what you want.”

    The truth of it felt like a blow, and her fangs fell away with the shock. (Some part of her realized that she was going to be like Spike and like Angel, and her resting face was human — fangs were mostly for hunting, and she’d been in hunting mode when she first opened her eyes.)

   Spike opened his mouth as if to say something, but he stopped.

   She knew, though. “You have a soul. I don’t. I’m not Buffy, and I’m not what you want.”

   “You knew it was going to be like this,” Spike said evenly. “You’d sorted it out. You told me. You were okay with what it would be.”

   “I was....  _ She _ was!”

   She leaped up out of the bed, and didn’t even care that she was only in a nightdress. “She worked it out, Buffy got to go up to heaven, and that dumb soul gets to wander off, and leave me to deal with her mess!”

   “Buffy, that’s not what it is!” Spike snapped, jumping up himself.

   “No!” she shrieked. “I’m not Buffy! Don’t call me Buffy!”

   “Well, what should I call you, Charlie?”

   She hit him in the nose. “Don’t make fun of me. I’ll rip out your spine!”

   “Calm down, Chuck,” Spike said, gingerly touching his nose. “Just settle down, and we’ll talk.”

   “I don’t want to fucking talk,  _ I want to kill! _ ”

   Spike stopped playing helpless and pounced, every line of him the elder leader of vampires she knew he was. He slammed her against the wall and glared into her face, vamped up and dangerous, growling low in his throat. “You are not killing anything but other demons, you got that? Nasty ones. And if I gotta chain you up to keep you to it, I bloody will, and don’t you test me, pet.”

   Holy fuck, he was sexy. Her unneeded breath came quickly and she nearly melted at his feet, even as the rage made her want to rip his testicles off. Why wasn’t he biting her? He should have been biting her. She clenched her teeth and her lips twisted as her own snarl rose in her throat. “But I’m starving,” she complained.

   “There’s pig blood in the fridge,” he said, and that totally clinched it for her. He was absolutely not going to let her kill.

   It felt like another death. Her new greatest dream on earth died between them, and tears welled in her eyes. “That’s not fair!” she whimpered.

   He shook his head. “No. It’s not. But it’s what we get.”

   Her face crumpled, and his own put away its fangs. “It’s okay, pet. You get used to it.”

   “This isn’t right,” she said. “None of it’s right.”

   “I know.”

   She did fall then, sliding down the wall in despair, tears flowing freely as she realized she was not allowed to be evil. She _ wanted _ to be evil. She wanted it so badly, first because of what her vampire instincts were telling her was right, but even more....

   She was really fucking angry at Buffy.

   Buffy got what she wanted, she got to make the decisions, and now here  _ she _ was, a demon, not what she wanted, here to keep Spike from being alone, to protect the world or something, not here for  _ herself _ , just something for everyone else. She no longer had the slayer instinct that made that okay. It was totally not okay, and she wanted to punish Buffy for leaving it to her. She wanted to do the absolute  _ opposite _ of what Buffy wanted, she wanted to kill and drink blood and hurt people rather than all the things Buffy wanted, just to spite that stupid human woman who had told Spike to do this to her. But Spike had done it, because he loved her, or loved who she used to be, and okay, she was here for him, right? Which meant that he should be there for her? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work, then?  

   “Hold me?” she whispered to Spike. “Hold me, please...?”

   Spike went down to his knees and gathered her into his arms, and good, that was good, he did want her, after all. She snuggled up against his skin and nuzzled the silver chain around his neck and started sensuously kissing his throat, because if she couldn’t have blood and she couldn’t have death at least she could have Spike, right? And she reached for his shirt, and slipped her hands under to his taut belly, and grabbed at his jeans to get out his cock, because she’d really like him to fuck her right there, take away all that ugly not-evil stuff, show her how evil he could be, really, underneath it all, let her be just a little evil to him sometimes, the way she had as a slayer, at least they still had that, right?

   But he pulled away again.

   “No!”

   “Just... not yet, right, pet?” he said. “Gimme some time.”

   The rage swelled again. She yanked herself away. “You just want that god damned soul of Buffy’s!”

   “Yeah, I’m still grieving, right?” Spike shouted at her. “Just gimme a little time to get used to this, yeah? I barely even know you!”

   “You’d have been all over me in a second if you didn’t have that disgusting soul!” she retorted.

   “Yeah, well, I do!” Spike snapped. “Get used to it!”

   “I don’t want to get used to it!”

   “Well, you’re up the crick, then, I reckon, ‘cause that’s where we are!”

   The two vampires stopped suddenly, staring at each other as they each realized he was right.

   He had a soul. She didn’t. He loved Buffy. She hated her. She wanted everything, instantly, selfishly, and didn’t care who it hurt. He was grieving and tempered and self-sacrificing. They were the same, but that also meant that they were now completely and utterly different.

   That was exactly where they were.

__

***

__

_  Buffy didn’t mean for this. _

   Spike sat at the table and stared at the pale-faced fledgeling he’d sired. She had settled down to pigs blood, agreed not to feed on their friends, but Spike had exerted Sire dominance and forbidden her from leaving the apartment complex yet. This was going to work for a while, since she still had some minion characteristics despite the strength he’d imbued her with, but wasn’t going to last for more than a couple weeks. The stronger the vampire, the less minion-like they were. She was already strong enough that it spooked him.

   It had been a day or two since the newborn had risen. Faith hadn’t left, and Willow and Giles stayed on high alert to help contain her if she suddenly decided to break in some way. Xander and Dawn mostly stayed out of her way. Dawn had tried to make friends, and had actually succeeded to some extent, but apart from Spike she was the only one that had made any kind of connection with her. She hadn’t yet settled down to a name, but she would get unreasonably irate at being called Buffy. Dawn called her Buddy, because when they’d first met she’d said maybe they weren’t sisters anymore, but they could be buddies, right? Spike had stuck with calling her Charlie, though she rolled her eyes at it.

   In his mind he referred to her as  _ The Bitch. _

   The Bitch seemed to carry all the worst aspects of Buffy, her selfishness, her obliviousness, her hunger and rage, without any of the things that tempered her, made her heroic, made Spike love her so desperately. It wasn’t that he hated her. Really it wasn’t. He had no reason to hate the Bitch, but apart from her groping at his body when he wasn’t on guard about it, there seemed nothing about her that he wanted to love, either. 

   Actually, the groping creeped him out. Yes, she still had Buffy’s body, though it was cold and hard and stank of vampire, but he could have learned to love the changes, given time. No, she’d certainly have been down with shagging him, that was obvious. But it wasn’t the body he had loved about Buffy. It hadn’t been for years. She still had Buffy’s mind, her voice, her laugh, little bits of her that he loved, but they just kept falling squarely into an uncanny valley of  _ it’s not her, _ and it was like the Buffybot after Buffy had died. The Bitch just wasn’t the really  _ real _ Buffy. And it wasn’t enough.

   As for her... well, the Bitch  _ said _ she loved him. But it was clear she didn’t love his soul, the soul that he had fought for and nurtured and twisted his entire nature to accommodate. He had grown and learned and changed and fought  _ everything _ to become worthy of that soul. He loved the damn thing, and Buffy had too. If the Bitch didn’t love that, or love what he had made of himself in order to earn it, then what the bloody hell was she claiming she loved? His strength? His looks? His coy charm? Hell, anyone could have that. It’s like she loved the guy he used to be before the soul, which would have been nice enough, but… he’d changed a lot since then. 

   So she claimed to love him, but didn’t seem to understand it. He should have loved her, but somehow just... couldn’t.

   He missed Buffy.

   They’d tried to talk, but they just kept coming back to where they were. They never did manage to address it, but that was what it boiled down to. Souls, one way or another, Buffy’s soul, or his own. The presence or the lack of one had made the whole situation hellish on one side or the other. And they could never address what that meant.

   So now there was only one route open to them.

   “Okay. Are you sure you’re okay with me doing this?” Willow asked. She looked around the table at everyone in turn. The whole team was there, Spike and the Bitch on opposite sides of the table. “Everyone?”

   “So long as we’re not, like... gonna do something she doesn’t want,” Dawn said. “We’re not screwing up her rest or anything?”

   “This is completely reversible,” Willow said. “Unless I close the final spell loop, all we’re doing is calling down a manifest spirit. Dawn? Would you like to hold the talisman?”

   “Yeah.” The talisman was a photograph of Buffy. All they had to do to reverse the spell was destroy it. Spike glanced at his ersatz little sis, and almost wanted to snatch the photo away from her. He wanted to hold Buffy. Even this tiny little representation of her....

   He glanced up at the Bitch. So why didn’t he want to hold  _ her _ ?

   It was okay. In a little while, it would all make sense, he knew it would.

   “Okay. Everyone... hold hands.”

   Spike took hold of Dawn’s hand on one side, and Xander’s on the other.  _ Oh, god, let this be the right thing. _

   Willow had altered the curse — not a curse any longer, more of a spell now, she said. She set an Orb of Thesulah on the table in front of her, and arranged all the other paraphernalia around it. Then she and Giles and Dawn started to chant bits of Latin, and Spike looked up across the table.

   The Bitch was looking across the table at him, her cold green eyes like glass bottles, sharp and wicked. She had agreed to this, but he still wasn’t sure if she really wanted to.

_ I like who I am! Why would I want to change? I’m finally free. _

_   You’re cold, _ he’d said.  _ And you don’t understand. The depth, the reasons of life, the  _ why _ of things. You can’t get it. And I can’t just explain.  _

_    And you think this would make me understand? _

   Spike had shrugged.  _ It helped me. _

   Willow had only agreed, though, if she could check first.

   The chanting suddenly stopped, and the Orb of Thesulah started to glow faintly... but only faintly. A pale, ghostly light emanated from it, a diffuse miasma, a cloud of spirit.

   “Buffy?” Dawn said, starting up. “Buffy is that you?”

   “ _ Whhy? _ ”

   The voice didn’t sound like a voice. It was the hum of a clinked glass, still echoing in the air, it was the whistle of wind through the trees, but with a sting of certainty that made Spike cringe, he knew, he knew her. “Buffy!”

   The voice hummed again, louder, the glass now with a wet finger on the rim, moaning. “ _ Nooooh.... _ ” 

   “Buffy, this is Willow,” Willow said. “We called you back for... for what you left behind....”

   “They called you back for me,” the Bitch said loudly. “Look, hi. Did you want to curse me or something? ‘Cause I guess I could be down for that, if you want.”

   The twisting light shifted again, playing over the newborn’s face. “ _ You.... _ ” it whispered.

   “Yeah, me. Hi,” she said with a wave. “Look. Spike thinks I need a soul.”

   “ _ Do yhou...? _ ” Buffy asked.

   The newborn hesitated, and then answered honestly. “No. I think I’m just fine as I am.”

   “ _ Then whhy...? _ ”

   “Buffy!” Spike said again, and the spirit twisted one more time. Her light blinded him. “Buffy, I can’t,” he told her honestly. “I just can’t, she’s not you.”

   “ _ Oh, Spike.... _ ”

   He wasn’t sure what he heard in her unearthly voice. Was that disappointment? Regret? Disapproval? It could have been pity.

   “Come back to me, Buffy,” he whispered. It was embarrassing to display his need before all the Scoobies, but to hell with it. “Come back to your body, it’s a vampire, but we can live with that, yeah? I can’t bear this. Not without you. Please.”

   “ _ Spiiiike.... _ ”

   He already heard the answer, and he couldn’t bear that, either. She was going to reject him, turn away from him, leave him. Leave him with this empty vampire construct she’d made him create.

   He almost went to his knees. “Please, Buffy,” he begged. “Don’t you want to come back to me?”

   There was a long moment. “ _ Nooooh, _ ” she answered.

   His breath left him as if he’d been slugged, and Dawn snatched her hand back from his. “It’s okay, Buffy,” she said. “We love you.” She picked up the photo and held it between her hands. “We’re sorry to have disturbed you.”

   “What? No!” He wasn’t done begging yet! Spike reached for the photo, but Dawn had already torn it in half.

   The spirit light scattered away from the table with a sound like a sigh of relief, and Spike snatched the pieces of the photo from Dawn’s hands. “No!” he cried. “I wasn’t done yet! I wanted to say... to say...!” He held the photo in trembling hands and tried to hold it together, though he knew the magic had passed. Buffy was back where she belonged. Where she wanted to be. In heaven.

   Not with him.

   He stared at her image on the paper and watched as it blurred through his tears.

   “You heard her, Spike,” Xander said gently. “She didn’t want to come back. We gotta respect that, man.”

   “We already screwed that up once,” Willow said.

   “I agree,” Giles said quietly. “I was all right with this spell, because it was only ensouling a vampire, not a full resurrection, but we can’t do this without the soul’s consent. It would be cruel.”

   “Who cares?” the newborn said brusquely. “You think Spike or Angel’s souls up and said,  _ sure, I want down here on this crumby planet _ ? What’s it matter  _ what _ we do to the dead bitch?”

   “You shut it!” Spike yelled at her.

   Dawn sighed. “Come on, guys,” she said quietly. “Let’s go. They need to shout again.”

   The Scoobies had already gotten used to the fact that all Spike and the Bitch did was shout at each other.

   “Well, that’s it,” the Bitch said after the others had trailed out, leaving the two vampires to glare at each other. “All you got left is me.”

   “Shut up,” Spike said wearily. “Can’t you just understand? Why can’t you let me miss her?”

   “I do let you miss her!” she snapped. “Do you think I like seeing that hate in your eyes when you look at me?”

   “I don’t hate you.”

   “Yes, you do.” She glared. “And you should have known you’d hate me before you even made me. Why the fuck did you do it?”

   Spike looked down at the picture still in his hands. “She asked me to.”

   “She didn’t make you,” she snapped. “I didn’t make you. You did this on your own.”

   “I would have let you die!” he yelled at her. “I would have been respectful, I would have just let you go, like I did last time.”

   “Oh, bullshit. If you’d been able to catch me as I dropped off that tower, would you really not have shoved me up with your blood and kept me as your little vamp pet?”

   Spike lowered his head. No. He knew, he probably would have. Back then. Maybe. But that was before the soul, and it was before they’d loved each other properly, and it was before... before. Besides. He hadn’t done it back then, so there was no knowing what he would have done. Not really.

   “I would have been your slave,” he said quietly, more to the picture than to the vampire beside him.

   She scoffed, then hesitated. After a heavy pause she asked, “Do you even like me?”

   Spike’s eyes closed. “I want to,” he finally said.

   “You don’t want to very hard.”

   He looked away.

   “Come on. Let me show you what I can do for you,” she said. “You know I know how. I still know your body. You still know mine.” She reached forward and grabbed for his arm. “Come on,” she said. She pulled him toward the doorway. “Come on.”

   He still didn’t know. “No,” he said softly.

   She hesitated. “Stop me,” she finally said, and dragged.

   He didn’t.

   It felt wonderful. He knew every nuance of her form, she knew every move he would make, they melded perfectly, their bodies still fitting together, their instincts still in unison, the dance a wordless fusion of understanding and pleasure. 

   And he hated every second of it.

***

__

   “What did you do?” Spike stared in horror at the room he found himself in.

   He hadn’t believed it. Yeah, the Bitch was evil, but she wasn’t cruel. Was she?

   Well. Except to him. Buffy was always good at being cruel to him when it suited her.

   “What do you mean?” she said, lounging luxuriously on the couch. “No, don’t get up,” she said to the half naked blood-junkie who was stretched across her middle. “I was feeding. What does it look like?”

   The blood-junkie looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s, uh, not like I haven’t let someone’s boyfriend bite me before,” he said nervously. “It’s just... uh... he looks pretty mad, Sparkle.”

   Spike glared. “Sparkle?” he asked his fledge. “You let them call you  _ Sparkle _ ?”

   “Why not? Better than Charlie.” She sat up more on the completely naked blood-junkie she was lying against. The half-naked one took the opportunity to dart behind the couch and retrieve his shirt. The completely naked one was too far gone to care what the Bitch did, or who she was arguing with.

   It had been weeks. Weeks of watching it all crumble slowly around them. He feared this was going to be the straw that broke the camel.

   Spike had started letting her go out when he was sure her fledgeling impulses were enough under control that he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to start killing. And she hadn’t. But he’d started smelling human blood sometimes — not on her clothes. She was too careful for that — but just a whiff, sometimes, a miasma around her hair. He’d followed her that night to a storage unit, where she had apparently changed into this whorish thing she had on now, and then continued until he’d found this freelance suck-house, a sort of bathhouse for the undead. Blood-junkies and vampires would come in, do what they were going to do, and come out again. No specific money exchanged hands save a nominal fee for the use of the rooms. She wasn’t entirely acting the bloodwhore. It was still a suck-house.

   He knew he shouldn’t be so mad. She was only going sucker. But he would have dusted before he’d have lowered himself to that, and also... weren’t they dating? Didn’t that matter to her? But there were the blood-junkies, their junk all over her, and she was clearly enjoying every second of it.

   “Spike and Sparkle, has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” she asked.

   “No!” Spike pulled her up off of the couch and tried to drag her to the door.

   “Stop it!” She yanked her arm back and stood defiant, strong enough to fight him, fledgeling or not, and they both knew it. “Come on, Spike. Stay and have some. We can share the bite together, you’re up for it right, Roger?”

   “Rodney,” said the blood-junkie nervously. “Look, I didn’t know she had a regular thing here. I can—”

   “Put a bandage on,” Spike snapped at him, and his hand shot to his throat. He was still bleeding pretty heavily, though Spike was relieved to see she hadn’t gotten anything major. Roger-or-Rodney went scrabbling for the pile of clean towels and plasters that were stacked by the door for exactly this purpose.

   Spike turned back to her. “You know I don’t drink human blood anymore.”

   “You drank mine just fine,” she retorted.

   “That was different!” Spike insisted. “We were partners!”

   “We were deluded,” the Bitch shouted. “Blood is blood, it’s not the fount of life or the path to true enlightenment or some stupid spiritual bond. It’s just blood, it’s nummy, yeah?”

   “And you don’t even care that it matters to me!” Spike yelled.

   “You don’t even care that I’m choking on that pig swill you drink, and I’m fucking  _ bored _ . You don’t even like fucking me, do you?”

   Spike’s mouth opened, wanting to deny it, but he couldn’t.

   “You think I can’t tell?” she asked. “You go through the act like it’s some kind of duty. I want someone to love me, to _ want _ me! To want me the way you fucking won’t.”

   “So this is my fault now?” Spike demanded, gesturing at the suck house. “You know you sound like your ex.”

   The Bitch shrugged. “Well, maybe I understand Riley a bit better these days.”

   “Since you lost your soul.”

   “Since I found myself with a lover who doesn’t love or want me!”

   “So now you’re claiming that Captain Underpants was right, and you never loved him?”

   “Maybe I didn’t,” she said. “I don’t know if I really understand love anymore.” She took a step toward Spike. “If love made sense, you’d love me. ‘Cause you loved her, and I’m what she left behind for you to love. But you don’t love me. Do you.”

   He couldn’t deny that, either. “And this?” he said, desperately, hoping to get off of him and onto her. Rodney had taken the opportunity to sneak out the door and leave the two vampires to it, so he gestured at the passed out blood-junkie instead. “This is you loving me?”

   “Got to find some pleasure somewhere,” she said, and Spike winced. He wondered if she knew how much she sounded like Drusilla in that moment. It was probably still true, though, that he was all covered in Buffy.  _ I look at you... and all I see is the Slayer. _

   That was the problem. He looked at the vampire... and all he saw was _ not _ the Slayer.

   “So you needed to cheat on me.”

   She rolled her eyes. “I tried to tell you what I wanted, you wouldn’t listen!”

   “I tried to tell  _ you! _ ” Spike said. “You know me, you know everything, how could you think this wouldn’t hurt me?”

   She stared at him. “I knew it would. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

   “But you did it anyway?”

   She shrugged. “Yeah.”

   There was a heavy silence as they both processed this.

   “Tell me the truth,” she asked. “Do you love me? Me? The vampire, is there actual love you have for me?”

   Spike stared at her for a long moment, and then made a confession that he hadn’t even wanted to make to himself before now. “Not even sure I still love  _ her _ .”

   He had to sit down. He sank onto the couch, pushing the naked blood-junkie’s feet out of the way.

   She stared at him. “‘Cause she wouldn’t come back to me?” she asked.

   “‘Cause she wouldn’t come back to  _ me. _ ” He winced. “I got so used to her not loving me, when she finally did, I didn’t trust it. Took so long to trust it.” He shook his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve.”

   “Not wanting to live as a cursed vampire doesn’t mean the stupid bitch didn’t love you,” the fledgeling said.

   “She didn’t love me  _ enough _ ,” he said, looking up at her. “Think about it. She wouldn’t live like me. Which means, what? What does she think of me? She must still think me a monster.” He shook his head. “She didn’t love me.”

   The fledgling’s eyes narrowed. “Well, she sure as hell thought she did,” she insisted, more annoyed than hurt. “And you know what else? She didn’t think the soul was all that damned important.”

   “Oh, bollocks.”

   “No,” she insisted. “Buffy thought the fact that you wanted it was the important bit. It was that you’d gotten to the point where you  _ wanted _ to have a soul. And Spike, I’m not there! That’s why she said no, it had nothing to do with  _ you _ . I was willing to do it for you, but I didn’t  _ want _ that soul, any more than Angel wanted his. She and I would have been fighting for supremacy in this body all the time, and none of us would have been happy! Not me, not her, not you, and not your soul, either.”

   “I’m not me and my soul, I’m just me!  _ With _ a soul!”

   “I wouldn’t have been,” she insisted. “I would have been like Angel, fighting inside all the time, two people at once, hating myself. Don’t you get it? I’m not ready.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

   There was another long silence, punctuated only by the restless groan of the blood-junkie, who was starting to throw off his stupor.

   “What about you?” she asked.

   Spike glared. “What about me?”

   “Will you ever be ready? For me? For real?”

   Spike looked down. “I don’t know.”

   “But you’re not ready now.”

   His eyes closed.

   She sighed. “Guess that’s it, then,” she said. “I’ll pack up some of my stuff and find my own place.”

   “Don’t...”

   “Gotta,” she said. “I can’t live like this anymore.”

   “Lying to me?”

   She shook her head. “With you knowing the lie. I sorta hate you, but think I sorta love you, too. If you’re not deluded about who I am anymore, you can’t even pretend to love me. And I can’t watch this shit. Not anymore.”

   “Buffy....”

   She shook her head. “Don’t. I’m just gonna go. Tell the Scoobies and Dawn I’ll be okay on my own. Look, I’ll keep my cell phone, okay? No burned bridges. Just... it’s over.”

   He stared at her. “Don’t kill.”

   She rolled her eyes. “I know, you’d find it your bound and duty to destroy me if I did, right?” She scoffed. “That soul really makes you a bit of a pussy, you know that?”

   “Buffy loved it,” he said.

   “I’m not her.”

   “Got that right.”

   She turned and left, and he let her, and it was over and —

__

***

__

   “No!” Spike reached out and grabbed Buffy’s hand. “No! I’m not letting you go!”

   “That’s what got us into the last mess,” Buffy yelled at him. “Stop trying to protect me, that’s not what I need.”

   “Oh, bollocks, stop fighting me. Not like I treat you like some fragile flower.”

   “Of the two of us, you’re the one who could burn to a crisp or be rendered to dust by an aggressive picket fence or a god damn sunbeam,” Buffy snapped at him. 

   The bickering was reassuring. If she and Spike were bickering about silly things like, oh, life or death, and whose life or death mattered most, then they knew things couldn’t be that serious. The break-up still hung inside them, the sensible, logical, reasonable, and painfully inevitable breakup.

   “What’s wrong with dust and ashes?” Spike said. “Been there, done that, it was a doddle compared to the ghost thing.”

   “I’m not going to be a ghost, all right?” Buffy insisted.

   “And I’m not gonna turn you!” Spike shouted back.

   “So there!” they both shouted to the demon, who wasn’t impressed.

   “You can put stones in the river of destiny, but the water flows on all the same,” she insisted. “Do you really think your choices will make matters better? You’re immortal, but you’re fragile. She is mortal, but stronger than you. What makes you think you’ll reach the end together?”

   Buffy was struck by that, but Spike kept fighting the tendrils. “I came to grips with that long ago,” he gasped, “before I even stopped fighting loving her. She dies before me. I grieve. I’ll live.”

   “Will you?” The demon laughed evilly. “Will you indeed?”


	4. Burned

He Will Have

 

Burned. 

 

Content warning: hugely inappropriate jokes follow.

 

 

There was really no one to blame. Who can blame the sun for shining? Who can blame the earth for turning? Who can blame a vampire for being what he is?

Vampires were made of volatile preternatural flesh. Disconnection of the spinal column, removal of the heart, contact to the heart with wood, all would turn their flesh inert. Inert vampiric flesh turned to dust. Contact with flame, or exposure to the sun, would start a chain reaction. The vampire would be ash in an instant. Mere seconds in contact with a fire could turn a vampire to ashes, when a human being would only suffer burns. That was just the way of it. The price of immortality, supernatural strength, and built in weaponry was extreme fragility and a hundred ways to die.

It was something Buffy had come to accept. Until she saw what it meant, in the end.

He hadn’t been screaming now for a couple days, but it was clear his burns hurt him. Not all of them, of course. Most of them no longer had nerve endings. Or skin. Or flesh. Or even bone. Most of Spike... simply wasn’t.

Buffy trembled when she looked at him. Willow had been doing what she could. The cooling spell had almost iced Spike from the neck down, and frost limned his jaw. It made him sluggish and slow to respond. He’d slept for an hour or so, or maybe he’d passed out again.

Buffy was always glad when he lost consciousness. The truth was, she was starting to think she was only torturing him.

Spike opened his eyes with a ragged false breath. Since part of his right lung was exposed by the burning, his body whistled as he did it. His left lung held enough air for him to talk – and scream – but it was weak, and he tired quickly. “Any change?” he whispered.

Buffy blinked. “I don’t know. It hasn’t been that long. How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” he lied. Buffy could see the lie dancing in his eyes, just as she could see the organs move beneath his tattered flesh. He had no legs, no hips, had lost his right arm, had only a ragged, burned edged stump remaining for his left. His stomach was still intact, but his intestines and most other organs were ash. Fortunately, vampires could still absorb blood through their flesh, the same way alcohol could be absorbed by a person through nothing more than contact in the mouth, so they’d clamped off the stomach, and he could still sort of swallow.

Buffy had been feeding him her own blood. Human blood was better than animal for healing vampires, and slayer’s blood was best of all. She’d been hoping for scarring, healing, regrown skin and tissue to cover the exposed flesh. There was some hint that it was Willow’s freeze that was keeping the scar tissue from forming. But without Willow’s freeze....

Buffy looked down. The end of Spike’s spine was visible beneath the burned flesh, the frozen dust sparkling at the end of his coccyx. He’d burned so thoroughly that his flesh had already given up. Enough of his spine was exposed that it was as if he’d had it severed. He was already trying to dust.

If the blood was trying to heal him, it couldn’t work faster than the dust. The dust was resolute. It was determined. It was swift. It meant to burn through him like a fuse, racing up his body until it was halted by the icy magic.

“How are you holding up?” Spike asked.

His voice was a croak that hurt to hear. She tried not to cringe. What the hell was he worried about her for?

“I’m okay,” she lied.

There they were, both in different kinds of agony, both lying through their teeth about it.

Spike sighed in annoyance, and his face twitched. “Scratch my cheek, will you?” he asked. “Itches.”

Buffy came up and rubbed her thumb along the side of his cheek. His face was almost perfect. He’d been partially under shadow when he’d landed in the sun. It had burned him from the bottom up. His arms had burned as he instinctively tried to beat out the flames. It was only Buffy’s quick thinking with his coat that had stopped the fire where she had, and it was only Willow’s freezing spell that had prevented the dust from creeping up his body until he was gone.

Buffy remembered beating the flames back as sparks of ash flickered and flew around her head. Beautiful sparks, flying. Sparks of her lover’s body.

The body he would never again have.

She couldn’t help but realize how pretty it must have been from an outside perspective. The camera pans in, and there is Buffy, wreathed in smoke, beating out the smoldering from her beautiful lover, as glittering flakes of ash flew around her, and Spike was screaming and screaming and screaming....

It was only after Willow had stopped the creeping dust that Buffy realized she’d been screaming, too.

Her hands were burned. She would have given her own left leg to have those burns on Spike be anything like as mild as the painful blisters on her own hands. But that was the nature of the vampire. She was burned. He was ash.

“I’m... so... sorry,” she whispered, not for the first time.

Spike’s eyes closed and he sighed, a pale, pitiful sigh with his single functioning lung. “Buffy, face facts. It’s already over.”

“No,” she whispered. “No. It’s not over.”

“Buffy....”

“We’ve gone over this!” Buffy snapped. “I’m not killing you! There are humans who live full, complete lives without any arms or legs! I’ve met them!”

“Yeah, this isn’t quite like I was born on thalidomide, pet!” He wriggled, and flakes of ice fell off his torso. He wasn’t covered by anything but the frost. It wasn’t as if he had any parts that required modesty, and cloth on his wounds made what was left of his nerves fire like bees. “What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in a hot tub?” he asked.

“Spike.”

“Stu,” he said. “What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in a pool? Bob. How about in the bushes?”

“Don’t.”

“Russell. How about on the door step?”

“Stop it.”

“Matt,” he said. “How about against the wall? Art! In a hole? Phil!”

Buffy closed her eyes. “Please.”

“What about two men with no arms and no legs by the window?” he asked. “Kurt ‘n Rod.”*

“Stop it!” Buffy shouted.

Spike stared at her, his face grim. “You’d best get used to it, Buffy,” he said. “We both had. Better to laugh about it than cry, yeah?”

Buffy was damn nigh close to tears, and he had to know it.

He made a choked sound that she realized belatedly was a sigh. “I’m sorry, pet. I don’t mean to be rude.” He grunted with frustration. “I’d put my arms ‘round you if I could.”

Buffy curled up beside him on the deerskins Giles had provided to place Spike on. The hollow, separate hairs kept any part of Spike from having too much weight on it. When they’d first gotten him here, the bed itself had made him scream. A clean, cotton sheet over a deerskin had solved the problem for the most part, but it wasn’t going to work forever. And unless he started healing soon....

She could barely touch him. Only his head and shoulders were fully intact. The rest was an ice-caked, blackened, ashy, bloody mess. He was a writhing mass of red and white and black, with a perfect head and half a beautifully cut torso. She curled herself around him, leaning his head against her breast, placing her hand on his icy pectoral. Vampires had never felt cold to Buffy, not the way a human corpse would have. They always felt cool the way a pillow was, not warm, but reflecting her heat.

Now Spike felt cold. Even his head, outside the confines of the spell, was cold. He felt like a corpse.

“You’re cold,” she whispered. She hadn’t meant to say it, but it fell out.

“I’m dead, love. Just face it, I’m dead.”

“You’ve always been dead,” Buffy said. “We can make this work. We can heal you.”

“Buffy....”

“No.” She buried her nose in his hair and wished she could hold him as fiercely as she wanted to. Hold him to her. “It’s going to be fine. You’ll stay home. You’ll heal up. We’ll get you a wheelchair you can operate with your arm. You still have that. And I’ll get you a computer, something you can voice operate. You can write poetry, yeah? You can still do that. And you can still consult on demon physiology, right? And – and languages! You know like three demon languages. And history. You were right there for so much history. You could be a college professor. And you could still coach martial arts, you know? And I’ll go out and slay, and when I come home, we can curl up together and watch soap operas and kiss and sing and – and sleep together, and there’s so much you can still do, Spike. There’s so much. There’s so much....”

She was crying into his hair now. Spike trembled against her warmth.

“It’s a pretty picture you’re painting, love,” he said. “And one I’d go for, if I thought it’d work.”

“It can work,” Buffy insisted into his hair. “I know it could work. I know it.”

Spike made another of those gurgling sighs. “This is one of this times when immortality is worse than the alternative. If I was a human like this, I’d already be dead. There’d be no choice to make.” He shook his head. “You know, five, six years ago? If you’d offered me this, even this, in exchange for your love, I’d have jumped at it. If losing this body would make you care for me, it would have been a fair trade.”

“See? You have my love, okay? Stop acting like it’s over, you still have me.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have you, do I?” he said. “This spell is all that’s keeping me whole, and it hurts, pet. It just hurts.”

“Willow can do something about that,” Buffy said. “Let me call her–”

“Don’t,” he said, forestalling Buffy’s jumping up to get her. She gently put her hand back on his icy torso. “Buffy, do you expect me to watch you watch me, every day?”

Buffy squared her shoulders against the head of the bed. “I can take it.”

“I can’t,” Spike said. “I can see you hurting, every time you look at me. It’s like I’m ripping your heart out. I can’t stand seeing you in pain.”

“You think I like it? I’m only in pain because you are.”

“I know.”

“It’s not like I’m shallow enough that I’m pissed off that hot body is gone, okay? I’m not!”

“I know.”

“I can love you with or without it. I could love you if you were just a head in a jar, okay? I’d have loved you when you were only a ghost. I love you, your soul, your demony self, not your stupid body.”

“Yeah. But I’m hurting. Every second.” He swallowed. She could see the muscle tension in his face. Hell, she could see the tension flutter in his exposed musculature. “And I know you’re feeling it, pet. You’re a slayer. For all that you stand strong and alone, you’re chock full of the kind of empathy that shreds your bloody soul. And I know you love me, so you feel every second of this like it’s happening to you.” Buffy wanted to argue, but she knew she couldn’t. “You think I don’t see it?” he asked. “It’s like it’s happening to me twice, every time I look in your eyes.”

“Sue me for loving you,” Buffy snapped.

“Don’t be like that.”

“No, you expect me to just stop feeling about you? I can’t do that.”

“I don’t expect you to do that, I expect you... to do what you do.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“You’re the slayer, slayer,” he said. “Do what a slayer does.”

“No.”

“Buffy–”

“We’ve been through this!” Buffy snapped. “You agreed.”

“I gave up,” Spike said. “Got tired. I never agreed.”

Buffy clenched her fist. “I’m not doing it.”

“I’m not healing.”

“And I’m not killing you, all right?” Buffy insisted. “I did that once, and it nearly wrecked me. I’m not killing my lover again, no, not, just not, okay?”

“Just stop the spell. I’m already dust.”

“And let it creep up your spine, as you feel every second of it? No!”

“Then get your scythe and do it right!” he insisted. “We both know how fast that is, I’ll be dust in seconds, it’ll be fine.”

“Spike!” Buffy grit her teeth. “How can you expect me to do that?”

“I’d do it for you,” he said. “I’d turn the machines off, I wouldn’t let you live in pain.”

“Oh, bullshit, you don’t know what you’d do in my position. No one does.”

Spike was silent for a long moment. “Well, you have a chance to find out,” he said finally. “I’ve gone through hell for you, Buffy. I’ve been to the edge of the underworld and back. I’ve scrambled my brains. I’ve torn apart my life. I’ve poured my soul at your feet for the sake of you and your world. The least you can do is grant me a little peace.”

“You’re asking me to kill my lover. Again.”

“But it’s–”

“No! I don’t care if it’s what you want, that’s what you’re asking! It’s not fair to ask me.”

“It’s not fair this happened, but since when has life been fair?” Spike said grimly. “If I was healing, even just healing over the holes, I’d say yes, but this can’t go on forever, not like this. Not like this.” He gestured to his tattered body with his chin.

“You’re not being fair.”

Spike nodded. “You want me to call someone else to do it?” he asked gently. “I’m sure we could get Angel.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Buffy snapped, rolling off the bed.

Spike sighed again. “Seems we’re at an impasse,” he said. “I can’t live like this, and you can’t let me die.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Are you really that selfish?” Spike asked her, venom in his voice. “You put me through hell again and again, and now you’re going to insist I go through this, just so that you don’t have my death on your precious conscience?”

“That’s not fair, either.”

“That’s what’s happening. You can’t give me up, so you want to torture me.”

“I know!” Buffy yelled. She cringed. “You think I can’t see it? I’m not dumb, I’m not blind, I know this is hell! If I could end it for you, I would!”

“You can!”

“By killing you?”

“By letting me go.”

“That’s killing you!”

Spike sagged, as much as he could without much but his shoulders to sag with. “Like I said. Impasse.”

Buffy stared at him for a long moment. He wasn’t healing. She knew he wasn’t healing. The spell was keeping him alive, but only barely. They’d floated the idea of putting him in another body, but that was dark, dark, soul-eating magic, and there was no way to do it without destroying Willow’s, Spike’s, or some innocent stranger’s immortal soul, probably all three. It wasn’t worth it for that. But he couldn’t live on like this. He didn’t even want to. 

And she hated herself for doing it to him.

The truth was, killing her lovers was something that she seemed fated to do. She’d sworn she’d never let it happen again. But that was an oath she’d made for herself. Not for him.

“God damn you,” she whispered. Then, “I love you.”

“Love you, too. I’m sorry for this.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Me, too.”

And she left the room.

“Willow?” she said. “When’s the next time you have to re-up the spell?”

Willow looked up from the couch where she was trying to nap. The constant spell was taking a lot out of her, but she hadn’t complained. “I... I need to, um... what time is it?” She glanced at the wall clock. “Probably another two, three hours before I need to reset it. Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. “The spell fades, right? It doesn’t just all go at once?”

“Um... yeah. It’s like a thaw. Why do you ask?”

Buffy took a deep breath. “Willow... I think you should go get Dawn.”

“Dawn? But Dawn’s at college, it would take like three hours to drive there and back.”

“Yeah, I know,” Buffy said. “I think you should go and get her.”

The truth of what Buffy was saying hit Willow, and she went white. “I take it you want me to drive slow?”

Buffy closed her eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “Drive slow.”

Willow got up off the couch and went to give Buffy a hug. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to go see Spike first, though.”

“No, don’t–”

“I won’t hit the freeze spell, just... there’s a numbing thing I can do, without the freeze. It should last for…. It should outlast the freeze spell.”

Buffy’s tears spilled, and she couldn’t even pretend to be strong. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

Willow went into Spike’s room, and Buffy couldn’t watch. She grabbed the pillow off the couch and screamed into it instead, muffling her horror and her grief. A few minutes later Willow came out, pale and tearful herself, but with her resolve face on. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go and bring Dawn here. And Buffy?”

Buffy looked up.

“You’re doing the right thing.”

Buffy stared at her, tragedy etched into her face. “That’s what makes it worse,” she said grimly.

Willow bent and kissed her forehead. “He’s waiting for you,” she whispered, and then slipped out the door.

Buffy didn’t try to compose herself beyond not screaming. “S-sorry,” she sobbed as she came in. “I’m in tears, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

Spike looked a little teary-eyed himself, but the tension had gone out of his face. Willow had propped him on his most injured side, leaving his stump of an arm on top, and had placed a light blanket over his tattered flesh. They mostly hadn’t been doing either of those things. Blankets chafed his injuries, and resting on the wounds made other pieces fall off and put a lot of weight on them, so could cause more long-term damage. But what did that matter now?

If she didn’t pay attention to the fact that the blanket was painfully flat, he could almost look normal. Almost. Except for his arm, and the shadows under his eyes.

“Do you hurt?” she asked.

“Not really, Willow buzzed me up but good. She said it was a spell I’d become immune to, so she couldn’t use it often.” He swallowed. “She’s... she didn’t say, but does that mean...?” He sighed. “Willow said goodbye before she left. She said she was going to get Dawn.”

Buffy nodded tearfully.

“She driving there?”

“It should take....” Buffy choked. “Long enough,” she finished.

The relief in Spike’s face lost its question. His eyes closed for a moment. “It’ll be good for you to have her here.”

Something struck Buffy. “Oh! Did... did you want to see her, before...?”

“No. Really didn’t.” He’d spoken to Dawn on the computer after the accident, but this was different. Buffy understood. He didn’t want Dawn seeing him like this, if he could help it. Dawn hated saying goodbye, and he knew that. “Come here and hold me?” he asked. “Let me kiss you.”

She sidled up to him and tucked her arm under his pillow. She lay her arm over the blanket, and his one stump of an arm snuck against her. It was almost – almost – as if he was whole. She stared into his blue eyes and just cried.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t... seem to stop.”

“You let it out,” he said. “Don’t hold back, not now, not later. Be sad. Grieve. Whatever way you got to grieve, do it. Then stand up, love again, and try not to–”

“Shut up,” Buffy said. “If you’re about to say find someone else, just shut up. You’re a tough act to follow, William.”

Spike smirked, and Buffy half wished he was still in a position where she could hit him.

“I know what that’s like. Useless buckets of salt.”

Buffy choked a sob down to a reasonable volume.

“You do what you’re gonna do,” he said gently, “but know what I want is for you to be happy. Grieve away, but be happy in the end, okay? However you end up wanting to do that.”

“Just... don’t,” she said. “Just... just hold me. Just... pretend I’m crying for some other reason, it’s that time of the month or I’m tired or something, okay?”

Spike’s arm squeezed her gently, and she let herself imagine it was pulling her closer. “You go ahead and cry, love.” He kissed her tears – and yes, she didn’t let herself think about the fact that she had to put herself in a position where he could reach them, knowing that he loved to kiss her tears away – and kissed her forehead and whispered sweet endearments in his English toffee accent and she tried not to think about the fact that this was the last time he’d do this.

And she hated herself.

Grief comes in waves. Even premature grief. She remembered this from Angel, and her mother. Grief comes, washes over you, and then washes away. She couldn’t cry forever, just physically. Her tears slowly faded, and she sniffed against his throat. He smelled of ozone and burning. He wasn’t so cold anymore. Maybe holding him was actually speeding the process... oh, hell. Well. Maybe that was a good thing.

“What’s your favorite thing about the world?” she asked.

The question was random, disconnected, but Spike considered it for a moment without asking why. “This,” he said.

“No, really.”

“No, really, this. Laying beside you. Holding you. Breathing you in, just... being there with you. Doesn’t really matter what else is going on, the TV or sleeping or chaos all over the world. I just like it when you’re here with me. Really here.” He smiled softly. “Best thing on earth.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Be happy.”

“I mean with... with you,” she amended. “Do you want an urn, or sprinkled over the Chesapeake or something?”

“What the bloody hell do I have to do with the Chesapeake?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something I heard people did with ashes.”

Spike laughed and kissed her forehead. “Did I ever mention I love you?”

“Once or twice.”

“Do whatever you want with my dust, love. You pick. I won’t be in a position to care.”

Buffy nodded. “Okay.”

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“That’s my line.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.” He took in a deep breath. “Going to be interesting. Seeing what comes next.” He buried his nose in her hair and breathed her in. “I used to be convinced I’d go to hell. Then I was just hoping I’d get a peaceful oblivion.”

“Now what?”

He shook his head. “Dunno. Wherever your soul ends up. That’s where I want mine.”

“Well. Don’t go hanging around and do the ghost thing again.”

“Nah, I hated that.” He considered. “Maybe the Powers That Be will take pity on a poor, demon tainted soul and just....” He sighed.

“You’re worthy of heaven,” Buffy insisted. “You’ve done so much to save the world, without expecting payment. That cancels all the evil out.” She grumbled. “Besides, your soul didn’t even do all that evil, you did it before you got it.”

“I think it’s all on the same soul now, love. The soul’s part demon now, just like yours. I don’t play Angel’s two-person game.”

“It should still tip the scales,” Buffy said. “And you’re sorry for all the evil now too, right? Don’t they say that’s enough? Just being really sorry?”

“They say that. Was never sure I believed it. But...”

“Heaven’s a forgiving place, Spike, that’s the point,” Buffy said. “I wasn’t a saint, and I got there.”

“You were a slayer,” Spike said. “That’s better than a saint.”

“You act like a slayer now, too. You fight evil. I’m sure... sure.... I’m sure.” She just faded out and closed her eyes, praying, she guessed, or just... being sure.

They lay together, being there with each other, until Spike kissed her forehead one more time, and said, “Buffy, love? You might want to leave.”

She looked up. “What?”

He gestured to the blanket with his eyes. There was a subtle shift happening, as if he was moving. But he couldn’t be moving. The spell was fading....

“I’m here til the end,” she insisted.

Spike closed his eyes and swallowed. “You sure?”

“Yes. Bring up your fangs.”

“What?”

“Bring up your fangs,” she said. “Just for a second.”

Spike frowned, and the frown deepened to a demon, and Buffy lifted her finger and slipped it in his mouth. “Bite,” she said. “Just one more taste.”

Spike regarded her with his yellow eyes, then pinched a double puncture across the pad of her middle finger.

“Ow,” she said quietly, and he grinned as his fangs receded.

“You know I love hurting you,” he said quietly. “Just a little.”

“Yeah,” she said. He was still a vampire. She was still a slayer. She slid her finger across his lip, painting it as if with lipstick, and he let his tongue travel along it, then pull her finger inside.

The movement under the blanket was growing a little faster now. Dust, creeping up his spine.... He sucked sensuously on her blood.

Buffy held his torso close for as long as she could. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, I love you.”

His blue eyes stayed fixed on hers. He pushed her finger out of his mouth and reached for her lips, so she kissed him warmly, tasting her own blood on his tongue, and then he made a sound as his lung collapsed, and she cringed. She could feel him melting beside her, crumbling like man made of sand. “No,” she whispered. She’d meant to stay strong, but she couldn’t help it. “No, no.”

“Love you,” his mouth formed, though he no longer had breath to speak with. And then the dust crept up his neck, swallowed his head, and he crumbled to the pillow as if he had never existed at all. She lay alone on a sheet with a pile of blanket-covered dust beside her.

Buffy found herself with her hand against her mouth, holding herself inside as if her soul wanted to fly away from her body. She didn’t think she was holding back a scream. She could barely breathe. Dust clung to her bleeding finger as if Spike wouldn’t quite let her go.

No. No, no, wrong, wrong, wrong –

***

“No!” Buffy was the one to pull herself away first this time. “No! Absolutely not, no!” She glared at the demon. “That was just sick. Sick!”

“And I’m telling you,” the demon whispered. “I’m not the one doing this to you. This is your destiny. You reject one destiny, and another finds you. That is all.”

Buffy couldn’t move her arms, but she still had some freedom for one leg. She shifted it and kicked Spike with it, trying to shake him out of the vision. Spike came out with a gasp, sucking in the air he didn’t technically need like a fish out of water. “Bloody hell!” he gasped.

“Yeah, I think I got it now,” Buffy said. “We make a choice to reject destiny, and something else horrible happens. What we got to do is find the right path. There’s a way out of this, there’s got to be.”

“A way for you and me to end happy ever after?” Spike scoffed. “I never had that delusion, and you never did either, pet. We both expected to die horribly saving the world or some such.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” Buffy said. “That’s what we do, see?” She glared at the demon as the tendrils tried to get back into her eyes again. “That’s what we choose!”

“As if you’d lie passive and lose the fight,” the demon hissed. “If that was your choice, you wouldn’t even be fighting me now. No. You don’t escape your future that way.”

“Spike, come on,” Buffy said. “Think of something! How do we find our future?”

“Happy ever after?” Spike asked. “Crypt for two with a white picket fence? Bloody hell, Buffy, that would take a bloody miracle.” Spike stopped and glared at the demon. “Yeah. I got you, bitch. I pick the goddamn miracle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Before anyone says anything, I learned all of Spike’s jokes from a charming young man, who had no arms and no legs and a wonderful sense of humor about it, who just started spouting them around a fire one night. I include them in his honor.


	5. Lived

He Will Have

 

Lived

 

“So... what the hell happened again?” Spike was struggling with trying not to panic. There was only one other moment in time when he’d felt like this, and that was when he’d been a ghost. He hadn’t understood what was happening then, either, but he hadn’t had a body at the time to feel all the anxiety rushing through his system. Now it was rushing faster than ever, and he had all these... these things he wasn’t used to contending with getting in the way of it. Bodily things. Completely involuntary bodily things.

Everyone else was all excited by the miracle, and the answers for why it happened were few and far between. Giles had a theory that fit the facts, though Spike was having trouble wrapping his head around it.

“I’ve never heard of it happening before,” Giles said. “But it would make sense. If it was the Mohra’s blood, then... well. It is quite the miracle.”

“You said Spike shouldn’t fight the Mohra,” Buffy said, a piece of advice Spike had ignored, and wasn’t sure whether or not he should regret now. “You said the Mohra was more deadly to vampires than it was to me or Willow or even Xander. You said it would kill him, not bring him back to life.”

“Well, that has been case with the Mohra, from what I had been led to understand.” Giles had been listening to Spike’s heart, but now he took off the stethoscope and set it down. “The Mohra demon is quite rare, of course, only infrequently spotted across history. It was supposed to be incredibly lethal to vampires, in particular. Unlike with any other attack, any cut or scrape by a Mohra is said to render a vampire inert, immobile, and kill them.”

“So... how the hell is it that I’m alive?” Spike asked. “And not just alive, but living alive?”

“Well. The reason the Mohra is nearly extinct is because of its own powerful healing abilities.”

“That doesn’t follow,” Buffy said.

“Yeah, it does,” Spike said. “Demon pharmacology is notorious for having healing creatures hunted into extinction. What do you think happened to the unicorn?” Everyone stared at him, so he let that tidbit of history go with a dismissive wave. It was only demon rumor, anyway. “Yeah, a demon having the power to heal itself is an asset until humans get a whiff of some decent snake-oil, and want to play blood-extractor. I take it the thing was nearly wiped out by well-meaning hedge-wizards?”

“Exactly,” Giles said.

“Well. I saw Angel kill a Mohra in LA, so they can’t be that rare,” Buffy said. 

“That was probably this one’s mate,” Giles said. “My understanding is that there were only three or four breeding pairs left in the world, and most of them are in South America. If one was in LA, then its partner living in the area makes sense. Regardless, what usually happens if a vampire is injured by a Mohra with any active blood or saliva contact is that the vampire is rendered to a mere corpse within hours.”

“Wait, a corpse?” Spike asked. “Not dust?”

“A corpse. It’s a bizarre reaction, but just as lethal, in the end. The Watchers have records of slayers using darts dipped in Mohra blood in blow guns. Useful in jungle regions, where getting close enough to use a stake is difficult. But those records are of course very old, hundreds of years, before the Mohra became as rare as it is now. Usually the slayer in question would then decapitate the slain vampire, just to be sure, but the ancient records are clear that it’s a cold corpse they were beheading.”

“So... if I’m meant to be a corpse, why is my heart beating?”

Giles frowned and picked up the stethoscope again, double checking.

“It is beating, right?” Spike asked. “I’m not just going barmy?”

“Spike, you’re warm,” Buffy said. “You’re breathing. If your heart’s not beating, then this is even creepier.”

“Oh, there is assuredly normal bodily function. How are you feeling?”

“Dunno. Bit freaked out?”

“I meant more along the lines of physically. Are you in pain? Tired? Hungry?”

He wasn’t in pain, really. His back ached a little, but if he was human now that was probably just muscle aches from fighting a demon. The wound in his arm had stung, but was now already healed over, probably because of the Mohra spit or blood or whatever that had gotten into his system when it bit him. His eyes ached. He probably needed reading glasses again.

But he felt like his head was muffled in a towel or something, because he could barely hear, and he couldn’t smell at all. At least not the way he had. It was like the way you can see with your eyes closed – everything is black, but you can tell if there’s some light here or there. He could tell scents existed, but he couldn’t pinpoint any of them at all. And his chest felt weird because he kept forgetting to breathe, and then he ended up gasping for air. He didn’t have to breathe regularly as a vampire, so he had no pattern of it. And he was so, so, not used to his heart beating.

And it was beating damn fast, too, because he wasn’t kidding about that freaked out bit.

“Yeah, tired,” he said finally. “Sort of... um. Short of breath? I guess that’s what you’d call it? And, um.... Yeah, my stomach feels.... I dunno.” It made a muffled gurgling noise. “It’s not hunger. Don’t feel like hunger, anyway.”

“Sounds like it is,” Buffy said. “Maybe human hunger feels different from vampire hunger?”

“But why am I human?” Spike demanded.

Giles shook his head. “The only thing I can think of is, it may be because you possess a soul.”

Buffy and Spike stared at him, nonplussed.

“Well, if the effect of the Mohra is to heal the vampire to its... original factory settings, as it were, then of course all that would remain is a corpse without a demon to animate it. There is no indication that the Mohra’s blood could bring the dead to life. A human without a soul, unless it has absorbed some serious magic to take the place of that animated spark, is nothing more than a corpse.”

“Hey, I nearly lost my soul, once,” Buffy said. “My roommate in college?”

“She was taking your soul and replacing it with her own demonic essence to confuse her pursuers,” Giles said. “Likewise with the Mayor, who had earned immortality in exchange for his own soul. Something else had to replace it to maintain the body.”

“And Fred,” Spike said quietly. “Her soul was gutted from the inside out for Illyria. But it wasn’t like she lost her soul without sommat to take over for it.”

“Precisely. You Spike, and I suppose Angel, are unique, in that you maintain both the demonic essence and the human lifespark of a soul. If the Mohra healed the demon out of you, if you had no soul, you’d be only a corpse. But as you are....” 

“So... you’re saying I really am human. There’s no demon left in me. That’s what this is, this really is me given a second chance at a human life.”

Giles shrugged. “I’m no expert. But that’s my theory.”

“Bloody hell.” Spike sat back on the table, just absorbing the fact for a long moment.

“So... he’s just a normal human?” Buffy was asking. “Just... like you or Xander or something?”

“I think so,” Giles said.

“And it’s all because he has a soul? If he didn’t have a soul, he’d just be dead...?”

She was going on, but Spike wasn’t really listening anymore. He was alive. He was really and truly alive. This wasn’t just some demon disease that was killing him, he was alive again, he was human, he wasn’t cursed with the demon anymore. He was just... William.

“I’m alive!” he shouted.

Buffy stopped in the middle of complaining that it was a damn good thing Angel had killed his Mohra before it bit him, because could you imagine the shitstorm that would have stirred up, if he’d suddenly turned human after dumping her and stuff? She looked up and stared at Spike.

“You know what this means?” he asked.

No one had an answer for him.

Spike jumped forward and grabbed Buffy, planting a passionate kiss on her. Buffy sputtered, but didn’t exactly push him away. “‘Scuse a fellow, Rupert, old sod, I got a date here with my bird.”

Spike tugged on Buffy’s arm, dragging her down from Giles’s apartment down to their own. “What are you doing, what–”

“Need you,” he muttered.

“Spike this can wait. We’re still figuring this out, you need to check your heart, and whether you can eat real food, and we need to–”

“Can’t wait,” Spike said. He pushed her up against the door he’d closed behind them and breathed into her mouth. “I want to feel your heat as I work up a sweat,” he insisted. “I want our breath to hang between us, firing both of us. I want to make my heart pound as I hold your warmth against mine. I want to drive my blood-full flesh into you, pump you full of my essence as we breathe and pound and live each other. You hear me, Buffy? I want to live in you.”

Buffy was melting beneath his heated words, her eyes fluttering closed as he whispered to her, but she suddenly opened them again, blanching. “Oh, my god! We need condoms.”

“Huh?”

She pushed him away. “We need condoms!” she said desperately. “This isn’t some elaborate game anymore, we need condoms. And STD tests. I mean you’re from like the eighteenth century, what if you have syphilis or something?”

That threw cold water on Spike’s erection fast. “Nineteenth,” he said with irritation. “And Buffy... I was a god damned virgin.” And... he was blushing. What the hell was up with that?

“Yeah, but you can get syphilis from, like, cups, can’t you?”

“Not really, no.”

“But health care was crappy back then. I mean, he reset you to whatever you were, right?”

“Healed,” Spike said. “The Mohra healed me. Even if I had had a disease, which I didn’t, wouldn’t that get healed too?”

“Even TB?” Buffy said. “Your mom had TB, right? That can stay dormant, can’t it?”

That thought hadn’t occurred to him. And he’d already kissed her. “It’s treatable these days,” he said, but the idea spooked him.

“Besides, what if I’ve got something? You could catch it. I haven’t been tested. And I don’t think Riley was celibate, maybe I’ve been carrying something this whole time–”

“Why is that idea only scaring you now?”

“Spike... we just... we need condoms, okay?”

“Neither of us is sick.”

Buffy stared at him. “I’m not on the pill.”

That idea hadn’t occurred to him, either, and there was a peculiar mixture of elation, terror, and confusion at the words. His mouth fell open, and he stared.

“And I’m kinda freaked out that you’re bitching about the idea, actually,” Buffy said, and she was trembling. “I get to say if I want to use condoms or not, okay?”

“Well... of-of course, but....”

Her words hurt, little barbs tearing at his disturbingly beating heart. She was throwing all these things at him, accusations like he’d been some sort of wanton back before he’d been turned. And when he tried to say otherwise, she acted like he was the sort of bloody bastard who didn’t give a toss about a woman’s bodily rights. He hadn’t said no to the bloody condoms, he was just… confused.

Spike wasn’t even sure how the things worked. He’d certainly never put one on. He knew he could adapt, but this was suddenly a lot more complicated than he’d expected it to be. Why wasn’t she just falling beneath him like she did the first time? That was what he’d wanted it to be. He’d wanted to take her to bed and make love to her for the first time as a human man, and have it be as wonderful and as powerful as the first time they’d been together, and like that other first time they were together after he’d gotten his soul. Both times she’d just fallen thoughtlessly into him, without confusion, without delays, without a thousand niggling complications like condoms or disease or any messes but their own emotions.

It suddenly occurred to him that now that he wasn’t a vampire anymore, there was no more magic. Or... there wouldn’t be any magic they didn’t make themselves. But falling into bed with a vampire, not having to think about the realities of sexual contact and diseases and contraception, that was frankly a pure porn-level fantasy. That used to be their reality. No longer. Now that he was human... that meant sex was now all very real.

“I’m not against protection. Just never needed it before.”

“Yeah, well....” She shrugged and turned away, and it hurt. It felt like when she used to reject him, a real, serious refusal. He could almost feel her disgust.

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

He stepped away from her and found a chair. “Do you even still want me...?”

“Of course I do!”

“I just thought... you’d be as swept away as I was. I mean, it’s a miracle, right?” He sighed. “I guess that just doesn’t happen when it’s real.”

“Aw, Spike.” Buffy sighed herself and plunked herself down near enough to him to take his hand. “Look. When I was younger I’d probably have just fallen into bed with you, and if something happened, then something happened. I’d never have thought about the consequences. But I’m not a teenage kid anymore, and if things have... changed... you know, physically down there, we need to make sure we’re not doing something that’s gonna get me pregnant.”

Spike looked up. “Do you not want...?” They’d come to the conclusion that it just wasn’t going to happen, because he was a vampire and such a thing was dangerous for a slayer anyway, and that was okay. But that was before.

“I... I don’t know,” she said. “This is all really new.”

It was. Really new. 

“But I don’t want an unplanned one, okay? And I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”

“No, it’s not, I just....” He sighed. “Right, where do we buy condoms?”

“Pharmacies,” Buffy said. “Come on. We’ll go out together, it’ll be good. Romantic.”

Going out to buy condoms together had never been part of the romantic novels Spike liked to read, or even the silly soap-operas he could get addicted to, but he supposed she didn’t have to be wrong. “Okay,” he said. He stood up and pulled her close, sliding his hand down her hip. “Can I at least tease you mercilessly in highly inappropriate ways in public until you feel you can’t wait another second?”

Buffy grinned. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

 

***

 

Disappointed was the word for both of them.

Spike hadn’t realized that there were significant differences in how erections worked when they didn’t rely on magically modulated vampire blood, and instead relied on nothing more than a complicated muscle-valve and his own desires. He used to be able to get it up, and keep it up, and hold it back, and basically control the bloody thing, and if he couldn’t control it, he could get it up again. Five hours straight worked for a vampire.

It didn’t work so well for a human man.

“Don’t feel bad,” Buffy said beside him. “We’ll get there.”

“I didn’t mean to go so fast,” Spike said. He’d been kissing her and fondling her, but the damn thing just wouldn’t go back up. In fact he sort of wanted to roll over and go to sleep, and the idea of making more sweet love to Buffy wasn’t as interesting as it had been ten minutes ago – ten sodding minutes! That was pathetic. Also, he’d realized he couldn’t wrestle with her in the bed anymore. That had been one of their favorite things. But as soon as he used his muscles, the second she even pretended to fight back he was out for the count, and he might as well give up struggling.

They simply weren’t equals in strength anymore, and he was going to have to accept that.

The condom had been the most difficult bit, though. The thought of putting one on kept him from getting it up until after he’d rolled around with her for a while, and he missed the scent of her driving him crazy. She didn’t make him hungry anymore. He was used to his lust for her being a strange mix of lust and blood-lust and power-lust, and two out of the three were just gone. It made even landing the lust itself an elusive fish. Then once he’d landed it, he had to hold it back and slip this complicated rubber thing over his cock, and the poor thing was not at all used to the raincoat, and went to half-mast the moment it was on. Or maybe it was just the stopping to add it that was the problem.

He’d tried to laugh about it, but he felt so self-conscious, and that made it even worse. Buffy was sweetness incarnate, saying it was okay, sinking down to wake him up, as she put it, licking at his member through the latex to get it to remember what it was doing. Then once he’d finally gotten the wretched thing back to attention, and she’d lain back luxuriously to let him do his thing, at first he’d felt almost nothing, and then it all happened way too fast.

And now here he was, feeling nearly in tears, and was oddly reminded of that moment with Willow when he’d just gotten the chip and realized, for the first time, that the painful thing they’d stuck in his head wasn’t just a torture device that left him helpless in the Initiative’s prison, it was going to keep him from biting at all.

So being human wasn’t just going to make him weak and muffle his senses. It was going to keep him from pleasing Buffy. It was enough to make him want to wail.

“Spike... look. It’s gonna take time to get used to, that’s all.” She had been really sweet so far, but she was starting to sound impatient. “We can adapt.” She paused. “Are you even hearing me?”

How long had he been wallowing in self-pity here? “I’m sorry, pet,” he said, laying back down beside her.

Buffy sighed, exasperated. “I know you’re sorry.”

“No,” he said, “sorry for the sorrys. I don’t know what’s come over me, I just... my emotions are....”

Buffy smiled. “Only human,” she said quietly.

That nearly set those tears that had been threatening loose.

He buried his head in her throat and breathed in what he could of her scent. It was there. Distinct and animal, but he couldn’t detect her blood inside it, and he couldn’t hear her heart beating. He couldn’t smell her arousal, or her emotion, and he hadn’t realized that her heat would feel uncomfortable once he was already hot himself. “I wanted this, you know,” he whispered to her. “Angel had this... this prophecy. That if he did enough good deeds or whatall that he’d become human.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I heard something about that, but I didn’t know the details.”

“There was supposed to be this vampire, with a soul, but they didn’t know whether he was on the side of good or evil. But if he did the right things, he was supposed to win this shanshu and... become a real boy. But it never named him. I sorta thought... I thought maybe, if it didn’t name him, that maybe it could be about me.”

“You don’t know if you’re on the side of good or evil?” Buffy asked.

Spike had never thought of it that way. “No... uh. Well. Wes kept glossing over that bit.”

“Just, what I understood was, you got the soul because you absolutely wanted to be on the side of good, right? You were sick of being on the fence and you wanted the extra piece?”

“Yeah.”

“So... the prophecy couldn’t have been about you. There was never any question whose side you were on. Not once you got the soul.”

“Well,” Spike said, deciding that was neither here nor there. “I just thought... I thought me being human was... what you wanted.”

“What on earth made you think that?”

He pulled away so he could look into her eyes. “I thought it would make things easier.”

Buffy looked confused. “Oh.”

“Will it?” he asked. He’d known there were issues with him being a vampire. Issues with him being human... he didn’t know what they would be.

“I don’t know,” Buffy said finally. “I love you. But I... um....”

“What?”

“Well, I had a bond with the demon. And then I fell hard for the man within the demon. It... it’s going to take me some time to get used to just the man.”

“It’s gonna take me some time to get used to being just the man,” Spike said. “But in the meantime, I owe you something.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.” He crawled over her and kissed her face, then her lips, then her throat, creeping down her body to her breasts, her taut belly. He made her giggle as he kissed each of her hips, then buried his nose in her cleft, finding her clit with his tongue.

She giggled and moaned and spread wide for him, and he remembered how to do this. Even if he couldn’t make his cock behave, he could still give her what she needed here, he knew he could. But she didn’t taste of ambrosia anymore, the essence of her femininity a step away from the ecstasy of drinking her blood. Now she just tasted sour and slightly salty, and while it wasn’t distasteful... it just wasn’t the same.

 

***

 

“Here you go. One Sex-on-the-Beach.” 

“Oh, shoot,” said the girl beside Spike at the bar. She dug around in her purse, searching through over and over again. “I can’t find my debit card. Dammit!” She rummaged through the purse again, looking increasingly panicked, and threw Spike a desperate look.

He wasn’t a fool. He threw another fiver down on the bar. “On me,” he said, and the lady gave him a grateful look as the bartender snatched it up, indifferent where his cash came from.

“Thanks,” the girl said, and exactly as Spike had predicted, plunked herself down on the seat next to him before taking a sip of her drink. He was hard pressed not to roll his eyes like Buffy would, but he was grinning nevertheless.

“So,” he said. “How many men does that little trick work on, and how do you keep them from throwing you out?”

The girl gave him a sidelong glance. “If you didn’t bite, I’d have miraculously found some cash in the bottom of the purse,” she said. “But it’s a little more subtle than flat out asking cute guys if they want to buy me a drink.” She took a sip of her drink and looked him over. “Thanks for biting.”

Spike laughed ruefully and eyed her long brown hair. She was pudgier than Drusilla had been, in a comfortable, homely way. The kind of girl he could envision watching horror movies by herself in fuzzy socks, though now of course she was dolled up in the fishnets and lace accent dress, with black fingerless gloves. Most people had at least a hint of goth culture accessorizing their every-days. One would feel naked at Diablo’s without.

Spike liked Diablo’s. At least he did during the week. Friday and Saturday nights were loud and crowded, but every other night they kept the laser lights to a minimum, and left the music low enough that people could talk. It was one of the more ubiquitous goth clubs, which made some passing attempt at food and booths, though the main attractions were at the bar and the dark dance floor. And the open back room, which could always make Spike smile no matter how miserable he himself felt. Spike had been going to Diablo’s more and more frequently to get drunk and talk to someone. Some cute girl or sympathetic lone guy, someone who could lend a friendly ear to someone who couldn’t talk to his own bird.

“I haven’t bitten anyone in a long, long time,” he said with a dark smirk.

“You lonely?”

Spike laughed again. “Boy, you just jump right in there, don’t you.”

“I don’t get a lot of nights out,” the girl said. “I prefer to cut to the chase.” She held her hand out. “Beth.”

“William,” he said. “Nice to meet you. How come you don’t get out?”

“I got two kids,” Beth said, and he could see the subtle assessment as she waited to see what this revelation was going to mean to him. It meant nothing, but he let his smile flash more warmly to let her know that wasn’t going to inhibit their conversation.

“Babysitter?” he asked.

“They’re with my ex tonight, but usually he’s useless, so I don’t get a lot of chances to get away.”

Spike looked darkly into his glass. “Sounds like a prize ratbag,” he muttered.

“He’s an okay guy. Just useless,” she said. “You got kids?”

“Nope,” he said, with the sound of a pebble dropped in mud puddle. “Never will have, either.”

“Don’t like kids?”

“I like kids fine,” he said. “Can’t have any, as it turns out.”

“How come? Or is that too personal?”

“I got... sick... a while ago,” he said. “Really sick. Near death sick. Then I got better.” He took a sip of his drink. “It was a miracle. After that my wife and I thought about having a sprog, but... turns out I can’t.”

“Something happened?”

“According to the test, my boys are dead. Something about non-motile tails and corrupted DNA in the heads or somesuch. I don’t know. It’s all bits and bobs of science to me.”

“Was that ‘cause of the illness, or what?”

“Might have been,” he said. “Might have been the shot that cured me didn’t cure that bit right. Or could be just me. Not as if I’d had the buggers tested before I got sick.”

“Did you want kids?”

Spike shrugged. “Dunno. Thought I might.” He turned directly to her. “You know what I thought? I thought, that’s the whole point, right? Immortality? You pass on your self and you make a sprog or two and that’s how human men become immortal, innit? I mean, that’s the whole pay off you get for watching your body die around you every day, and the aching muscles, and paying for health care, and watching your weight, that’s what you get, you know? Some little cooing offshoot that’s gonna love you automatically, that you can snuggle up and watch grow and be part of your life for life, yeah? And you finally talk your girl into it after a year of being all unsure, and then it turns out you both had your knickers in a twist over nothing! So now you got no immortality, no sprog, no power, no nothing. And your girl shacks up with some Immortal,” he added, and knocked back the rest of his drink.

“Shacks up?” Beth frowned. “Are... are you saying she’s cheating on you?”

“No,” he grunted, annoyed at himself for voicing his suspicions aloud. “I don’t think so. I mean, I can’t know, you know? Not like I can smell it on her. Not unless she’s dumb enough to use his cologne or something.” He frowned into his empty glass.

“But you think she might have?”

“He was her ex. They had a thing. I mean, thing is over now, but... he’s cute. And he was in town, they had a job to do together, and I couldn’t go along.” He fingered the rim of his glass. “They were out every night for like a week.” He didn’t think she’d slept with him. He didn’t think so. But he feared so.

Trouble was, he’d have understood it if she had. Spike wasn’t getting her as hot as he used to be able to do. And the Immortal was cute. And Immortal and all.

“Why couldn’t you go out with them?” Beth asked.

“Too dangerous,” Spike said. “She’s... sort of in law enforcement.”

“Like a cop?”

“More like a bounty-hunter,” he said. “There was a time I’d have been right in the thick of it with them, but... I’m not the same man since that miracle cure.”

“Not such a miracle?” Beth asked.

“I used to be strong,” he said. “I mean, really strong. And my coordination was... but now....” He swallowed. “I stumble a lot. And I get winded. And the sight of blood makes me feel sick anymore, and her job is dangerous. There’s a lot of blood. And when she has to try and protect me, I just get in the way, and she gets hurt. She got hurt a couple times. And I got hurt. I sort of stopped going out with her so much.” He gestured to the bartender to fill him another, and leaned back on his bar stool. “Lately I just stay out of her way.”

“Sounds like there’s some other problems going on,” Beth said. “When my ex and I broke up, I knew he was cheating on me. But the real reason was that we weren’t talking. Can you talk to her?”

Spike chuckled. “If I could, do you think I’d be spilling out my troubles to a total stranger in a goth bar on a Wednesday night?”

Beth grinned. “I don’t know. If the stranger’s cute and willing, it might be a good idea.”

Spike looked at her sidelong. “You are making a very definite play.”

“You’re cute,” she said. “I’m willing. Is there a problem?”

“Well, the wife I just mentioned.”

“I don’t see that as a problem,” she said. “Not my problem, anyway.” She smiled at him. “Not like I could take you home to the kids. I don’t go to bars to meet my forever. But I got a minivan in the parking lot. The back folds down.” She grinned. “I promise you, the kids won’t bug us there.”

“You’re cute, too, Beth,” Spike said quietly. A single young mother, out at a goth club. He thought about Buffy, and what she would have been like as a mum. He would have liked her as mum to his kids. And he was pretty drunk. Which was why his next words were, “I don’t know.”

“Well, even if you don’t, you up to the back room?” she asked. “Because I could really use a little time in the back room.”

“Top or bottom?”

“Either,” she said. “I just want to go with someone.”

“Yeah, I think I could do that,” he said. He took up his drink and carried it with him as Beth collected her purse and led him across the dance floor to the back room.

The back room wasn’t exactly private, but it was shielded from sight of the main dance floor by a wall. It could be rented for private parties, but usually it was open to the bar. It was warm, and the lighting was low, though brighter than the dance floor. There were no speakers in there, so the music was muffled. Two doors made it so people could trail in and out without feeling trapped. There were black leather loveseats, and old shag carpeting. There was also a St. Andrew’s cross on the wall, velcro restraints, and a selection of low-key floggers and whips. A small notice by the cross called for consent and discretion, and that anyone who did not abide by those rules would be ejected without remorse. The back room was where Diablo’s went from PG-13 to a soft R. Anyone hitting a hard R would be politely requested to take it somewhere private.

Someone else was on the cross when they came in, so they waited their turn. Beth danced a little to the music, mostly swaying against him. Spike was a too drunk and miserable to want to dance, but he let her hang on him. He finished his drink, and enjoyed the sensation of the numbness of his lips spreading to his whole drunken face, and a pretty girl undulating against him. They didn’t have long to wait. The two ladies at the cross stopped their half-whipping petting session after about five minutes, and stepped down. “All yours,” said the dom.

Beth hung her purse on a hook by the cross and stepped up onto it, her back facing Spike. She only grabbed hold of the restraints.

Spike knew he was a little drunk for this, but he wasn’t going to play it hard, anyway. He didn’t like playing too hard these days. There was no demon inside him to get hot and bothered by it. “You got a safeword I should keep in mind?” he asked.

“Ow,” Beth said. “I’m pretty low-key. I won’t be screaming stop at you unless I mean it.”

Buffy was never low-key. And he wasn’t strong enough to make her say ow anymore.

“Understood,” Spike said. He selected a soft leather flogger and regarded Beth’s proffered back.

Whip - SNAP! He flicked at her back lightly. She shivered and waited for another blow. Whip – SNAP! Again. Whip - SNAP, whip – SNAP.

Damn. His cock forgot there was no demon and jumped in his jeans. It had been a long time since he and Buffy had played like this. He wasn’t strong enough, so it was a waste of time to push her. And she was so strong she could break him, so she couldn’t even pretend to be rough with him. He didn’t even know if he liked pain anymore. He was afraid he might not. He wasn’t even as strong as Riley had been, and he knew that sod had never satisfied his woman. Granted, he was a lot more determined to make Buffy scream than Riley had ever been, and he knew how to use his mouth for her, but that seemed to be the only trick left to him, and he tired so quickly. Buffy wasn’t merely human. She was a slayer, and while she could adapt and move into a lower gear for him... it was exactly that. She was lowering herself for him.

Beth, here. She was just like him. Human. Real. Solid. No demons left inside to make things complicated. Nothing hungering for the kill or the slay. No blood lust. No guilt. Just an ordinary woman with a daily life getting a small thrill with a stranger in the back room of a bar.

His hands were on her body, sliding up and down her hips, her ass, pressing himself against her between moments where he’d beat her lightly, and he really wanted to hit her as well as touch her, because how dare she be all he needed when he had the love of his life at home, who wasn’t the love of his life, was she, she was the love of his death, and she went out every damn night slaying with Faith, or Willow, or Rhona, or the Immortal, and every time she went out with someone who was her equal he expected to hear that that was it, he wasn’t adequate anymore, he couldn’t take being her partner, and she had to want/need/crave more, more, more than what he was now, what he should have been, what he just wasn’t.

He didn’t realize exactly when Beth had stepped down from the cross and fallen into his arms, but she’d done exactly that, and he was kissing a sweet, simple young woman who just wanted something simple and uncomplicated and human, and he was that, he was so human, he was nothing but human, he had died, Spike had died, the demon had been murdered and all that was left was this helpless human man, William the no-longer-bloody, who Buffy didn’t really love anymore, though he knew she wanted to, but she needed some monster in her man, and he wasn’t a monster anymore, not even a little bit, he was just a man out of time and useless and unemployed and scared of half the goddamn world.

He pulled away. “I’can’t’do’is,” he said.

“Huh?” Beth was breathless and flushed, clinging around his neck, her body pliable and willing. Yeah, he couldn’t smell arousal anymore, but she was bloody obvious.

“I can’t do this,” he said, trying not to slur this time. “I need to get home.”

Beth looked disappointed, but resigned. “Okay,” she said. Her shoulders sagged. “Thanks for the drink. And the rest of it.”

“Right.” He stumbled toward one of the back room’s doors.

“Tell your wife?” Beth said. “She’s a lucky woman. You deserve better than where you’re at.”

“Thanks, pet,” he said. “You’ve been sweet.”

She smiled and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll see you around again some time.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Good luck with the hunt.”

She chuckled. “There’s some other prospects out there,” she said. “None so cute, though.”

“You flatter.”

“Gotta use something. Later, William.”

Spike looked at her. He’d introduced himself as William? Since when had he started doing that? The truth was, that was how he thought about himself these days. He just wasn’t Spike anymore. And he knew it.

In her heart, Buffy knew it, too.

“I have to go home,” he said again. He stumbled out the door and through the bar, the music pulsing around his head like it was some living thing.

Spike thought about calling a cab, but he’d spent a lot on booze, and money was an issue between him and Buffy these days, so he decided to walk. Or stagger. He staggered in the direction of home, which was about a twenty block walk, through some not particularly choice neighborhoods, but what did it matter?

Not as if any big bad was going to jump out of the dark and kill him, right?

Some Mohra demon already had.

 

******

 

“It’s like some part of him died,” Buffy said. “And we were all too wrapped up in ourselves to notice. I don’t think even he noticed at first. But then everything that was good somehow wasn’t, and then when it turned out we couldn’t even have kids....” She rubbed at her face and leaned against the wall of the alley, too overwhelmed to keep walking anymore.

“Is that when it went bad?”

“That’s when we noticed it was already bad. But we were making it work before then,” she said. “Even though he wasn’t as strong and he couldn’t really... you know... do the things that we used to together. It was okay. I mean, we still loved each other. But then I started to realize he couldn’t even really remember what we used to be like.”

“He can’t remember?”

Buffy looked over at her companion. “Not very clearly. It’s muddy for him. The demon memories... I guess they belonged to the demon. When the demon died, the human brain just didn’t hold them the same, and they get blurry in his head. Do you have any idea how surreal it is to mention something that happened, and get this blank look? It makes you wonder if your own memories are solid. And maybe they’re not, you know? Maybe he’s always been human and we both just imagined he was a vampire.”

“That could still work for you, though. Now is the only thing there is.”

“Yeah.” Buffy frowned. “‘Cept now kinda sucks.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I think he feels inadequate. Which is stupid, he’s sweet and he’s kind and he really tries to please me. That’s enough to make a good husband, you know?”

The fact that she wasn’t done yet was palpable. “But?”

She sighed. “But. He can’t hold down a job, and he gets frustrated, and he actually gets woozy when I come in covered in blood.” She stood back up. “And is it so much to want a partner who doesn’t freak out when his slayer wife comes back covered in blood?”

Angel considered her for a long moment, debating his answer. “No,” he said. “No. It’s not.” He looked uncomfortable and said nothing else.

“Well?” Buffy demanded. “I’m pouring my heart out, here, and all you have to tell me is no?”

“Look, I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know why you’re telling me this. What do you expect me to do? Talk to Spike for you?”

“No,” Buffy muttered. “It’s just... it seems like you’re the only person in the world who could even begin to understand.”

Angel cleared his throat and looked away from her. “I guess.” He looked down, unwilling to meet her eyes, though she kept trying to catch his gaze. “It’s hard to be human,” he said finally. “Really. I’m... I’m surprised Spike lasted as long as he has without going... you know... a bit nuts.”

“Spike’s stronger than you think,” Buffy retorted, all ready to defend him, but Angel shook his head.

“I know he is,” he said. “I probably couldn’t have lasted a day.”

“Sure you could,” Buffy said. “You’re the great champion, right? It doesn’t matter what suit you wear or what body you have, isn’t the soul what matters?”

“It matters,” Angel said. “But I’d... I’d miss the demon too, I think. My powers are what make me able to help the helpless. Without them....”

“What? You’d be helpless?” Buffy shook her head. “You’d never start whining about being human if you were given a chance like his, would you?”

Angel made another one of those uncomfortable throat clearings. Buffy realized she’d learned to interpret them, in the years since she’d been in love with him. There was something he was hiding from her. She rolled her eyes. So what else was new?

“Maybe it’s just me,” she said. “Buffy can’t make it work with anyone, even when miracles happen.”

Suddenly Angel stopped walking and stared at her. “Buffy, it isn’t you.”

“Don’t see who else it could be, since I’m the one it keeps happening to.”

Angel’s eyes went wide. “What keeps happening? The... vampire turning human thing...?”

“No, the whole everything going to shit thing,” Buffy said. “Who else could have turned human on me?”

“Uh... no one,” Angel said. “Doesn’t matter. Thing is, this isn’t you. What you and I had... well... it isn’t the same anymore, and what you have with Spike... that... that’s real. Don’t turn me into something I’m not. I’m not the dream. I’m not a martyr. We broke up because I knew it wouldn’t work. Not because it was best for you, but because it was best for us.” He grunted and his head hung. “Best for me,” he said honestly.

“Uh... don’t get too full of yourself,” Buffy said. “I wasn’t complaining to you because I wanted to get into your pants or anything.”

Angel looked up, a strange mix of relief and disappointment in his eyes. He sighed. “I’m just saying. I knew I couldn’t make it work with you. Human. Demon. Soul or not, it didn’t matter. I loved you, but... I knew it was always going to make us miserable.”

Buffy glared at him. “You’re making me miserable, now,” she muttered.

“He’s making you miserable,” Angel said. “I’m just visiting.”

Buffy rolled her eyes again.

“Were you and Spike happy?” 

Buffy nearly teared up. “Happier than I’d ever been.”

“Then it’s not you. It’s the stress of what happened, it’s the kid thing, it’s the blood thing, it’s something outside. It’s not you. And it’s not him.”

“But that’s just the thing,” Buffy said. “It’s not him any more. Spike died. This isn’t like with you and the soul, it’s the opposite of that, the demon is gone, Spike is gone, and the soul is just swimming inside that body, confused and out of place and just not... not Spike!” She did finally break down. “I miss Spike,” she said. “I miss him. I miss him.”

Angel stepped forward and folded her into his arms, and Buffy let him, because there was no one else still alive that she wanted to hold. “I understand,” Angel said softly.

Something heavy thumped down the block. Buffy’s vision was muddled by the streetlamp they were under, and when she looked to Angel all he said was, “It’s downwind.”

There were heavy footsteps as someone started running, and then there was a shout. Angel and Buffy didn’t even look to each other before they ran to the source of the disturbance.

They heard it before they could see it. “Where you going, rocket man? Why you running? What you after?”

“Sod off!”

Buffy cringed when she heard that, and redoubled her pace, but not before the thugs surrounded their prey. “What you doin’? Got a wallet? What you want, running boy?”

The tiny figure in the middle of the muggers tried to fight them off, but he was staggering. Probably way too drunk again. He swung and fell and scraped his chin, and she and Angel were in the middle within another second, seeing the jerks off with a few punches and a couple choice words.

Buffy chased the fellows half a block before turning back to find Angel trying to help Spike up. “And what the bloody hell are you doing here?” he asked. Actually it sounded more like, “Watta bloodell yu doonere?” but Buffy had long ago learned to speak Drunken Spike.

“Saving your ass,” Angel said. Ah. Apparently he knew how to speak Drunken Spike, too.

“I mean you!” Spike slurred, pushing against Angel’s chest. “You’re s’posed to be off gettin’ your drunk handed soul happy ass.”

Her Spike translations were getting poor. Even Buffy couldn’t figure out that one.

“I came to help Buffy with a demon I’d heard was waking in the bay,” Angel said.

“Coulda let a fellow know afore he goes out for a pint.”

He’d had a lot more than a pint, from the way he smelled.

“I called last week to let you know I was coming,” Angel said. “Buffy didn’t tell you?”

Spike turned his sodden gaze on Buffy. “Which one didn’t tell me?” he asked.

Angel blinked. “The one on the left,” he said.

Spike glared just to the left of Buffy. “Go to hell, secretive bitch!” he told the one on the left, stumbled, and fell back to the ground.

“Come on,” Buffy said. “Help me get him back to the apartment.”

She and Angel hoisted Spike between them. They were both strong enough they didn’t need each other, but there was something comforting in doing it together. Buffy didn’t feel quite so alone in it. He muttered and sang snatches of old songs as they dragged him up the stairs together. “Run and catch, run and catch, can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man,” Spike muttered. “Don’t be nice to me, Buffy,” he said as they opened the door to the bedroom. “I kissed a girl. Human girl is human as human does. Does dust, dust to dust. Dust does Dallas.”

Buffy blushed. “He’s really drunk.”

“It’s okay,” Angel said. He poured Spike into his bed and sat down to unlace his boots.

“Put him on his side,” Buffy said. “He never thinks how fast the liquor is going to catch him.”

“This isn’t the first time he’s done this, I take it?”

Buffy looked down.

“He could outdrink me, as a vampire,” Angel said. “And I could drink with the best of them. He’s probably trying to keep up with his former self.”

“Yeah,” Buffy said. “That’s pretty much the story of his life these days.”

“Why didn’t you tell him I was coming into town?”

“He... he gets jealous. Even of Willow or Faith.”

“Well, you and Faith....”

“No, I get it,” Buffy said, blushing harder. “He never says anything, but I know why it happens. I just... I don’t like to see the hurt in his eyes when he doesn’t accuse me of something.”

Angel looked at her. “So you lie to him, instead.”

“That makes it sound ugly.”

Angel said nothing, just threw a blanket over Spike and made sure he was lying so that any vomit would fall into the floor.

Buffy tiptoed back to the living room and went to the fridge, planning to pull out a pint of blood for Angel. Of course, they didn’t keep blood in the fridge anymore. Buffy cringed and slammed the fridge closed just as Angel came back out of the room.

“This isn’t why I came here, Buffy,” he said. “I didn’t show up expecting to be a convenient excuse for the two of you to break up.”

“That’s not what this was!” Buffy insisted.

“Wasn’t it?” Angel asked. “We kill the demon, then you insist on inviting me home. You start spouting all the problems in your relationship, just outside as if hoping to be overheard. You didn’t tell Spike I was coming, but didn’t do anything to try to hide I was here. It’s like you were hoping to get caught.” He shook his head in irritation. “I wanted to try and be your friend, Buffy, but I don’t like being used.”

Buffy stared at him. “Neither do I. Good thing my childhood wasn’t ripped away and my first love wasn’t stolen by a teen-stalking vampire who took my virginity and used what he became from it to try and destroy the world. That would have sucked.”

Angel regarded her for a moment. “Nice to see how bitter you’ve become,” he said as he headed toward the door. “Always good to know what I got out of.”

“Angel I...” He paused. “I didn’t mean it.” 

“No,” Angel said. “I think that’s one of the few times you’ve been completely honest with me in years. I’ve earned your bitterness, Buffy.” He opened the door. “But I don’t think Spike has. Think about it.”

Buffy stood alone in her living room for a long time, trying to find the will to be angry at Angel, but she just felt numb. Some part of her had been hoping that somehow, she and Angel would suddenly hit it off again. But looking at him didn’t cause a thrill of desperation and longing, and talking to him didn’t make for an instant meeting of the minds. She and Angel hadn’t felt like soulmates since she’d been in college, and as sweet as she made those memories be in her mind, they weren’t any more real or less real than her memories of Spike. That time with Angel was gone, just as the time with Spike had gone, and it was just over.

Finally she gave up trying to sort out her life and went to take a bath. She lay in the water for nearly an hour, until the bathroom door burst open and Spike stumbled in. He didn’t greet her. Instead he fell against the toilet and vomited loudly, the smell and the sounds destroying all of Buffy’s joy in her soak.

She stood up and grabbed a towel, taking it out of the bathroom to dry herself. When Spike first started this too-much-liquor thing, she had tried to stand with him, holding his head and cleaning him up, telling him it would be all right. She didn’t do that so much these days.

Buffy slid on pajamas and got into bed, hoping to fall asleep before Spike came back out. She heard him finish with the toilet, flush, rinse his mouth and face before sliding back out of the bathroom. She pretended to be asleep.

He sank heavily, but without a stagger back into the bed beside her. “Buffy, we need to talk.”

His voice didn’t slur.

She debated keeping up the charade, but gave it up. She sighed. “You okay?” she asked.

“I’m still drunk,” he said. “Which is why we should talk now.”

Buffy looked over at him. He didn’t look his usual rip-roaring drunk, but his eyes were sunken, and he was unnaturally still. She remembered Spike in this phase. It didn’t happen very often, but when he hit that level of calm he was uncommonly insightful, and unflinchingly honest.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because this is already over,” he said. “I’m not enough for you. We both know it.”

Buffy rolled over and looked straight at him. “You sound like Riley.”

Spike smiled ruefully. “Maybe I understand Riley a little better these days.”

If Spike had still been who Spike had once been, Buffy would have hit him for that. She felt her face hardening and her fist clenching. She missed the Spike she could get mad at. Spike had always been her defender, the one who called Riley a wanker and said it was his own damn fault he wasn’t man enough to stand second fiddle to a woman. He was the one who let her know about the cheating, the suck-houses, the lies. He was the one who hated Riley, and had always hated Riley, and never gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“So now you think he was right?” Buffy said, her jaw tense. “That I didn’t love him, and that I just want some guy with superpowers, and it’s all my fault that you don’t feel adequate enough? Right?”

Spike closed his eyes. “No, love. This is entirely me.” He sighed. “I don’t know how to love you properly anymore. I was nearly crushed by you before I turned human. Now that there’s no monster left in me... I feel like I’m standing before a steam roller.”

“Do you really think I’m that shallow that I won’t slow down for you?” Buffy snapped.

“I think you’re that amazing you shouldn’t have to slow down for anyone,” Spike said. “And you are trying to slow down for me. And that’s no fair to you.”

“Spike, I—”

“You’re not human, Buffy,” he said. “When I was a demon with a soul, we were the same. Part human, part demon, we were the same ilk. Now we’re on different sides of a divide, and I don’t have the strength to hold on to you anymore. Not anymore.”

Buffy reached out and took hold of his hands. “I do, Spike. I can hold us both.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“Let me decide what it is that I want and don’t want.”

Spike stared into her eyes. “You don’t want me.”

“You’re not in my head!” Buffy snapped.

“Buffy... I’m not me.”

Buffy felt as if someone had poured ice-water down her throat. She’d been hoping Spike hadn’t realized this. “Yes, you are.”

He shook his head.

“It’s the soul that matters, isn’t it? That’s the important part. That essence. That... that... you... you still have your soul!”

Spike regarded her. “If you died, you’d still be a slayer. That essence would go with your soul. The slayer is the slayer from the demon inside you, the demon that is part of your soul. The demon’s been ripped from mine, Buffy. I can feel it. The same way I could feel the hole where the soul should have been, I can feel the layer gone.” He reached up and took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. “The soul and the demon,” he said. “I was like this. Two creatures, made one. I was more than human, more than vampire.” He took his hand away and left Buffy’s standing alone. “Now I’m like this. I can feel all those holes, and they’re not filling in with humanity. I’m just... less.”

“You’re not being fair to yourself,” Buffy said. “You’re still you. You’re still Spike, you’re still—”

“A man,” he said. “A man who knows sommat is wrong and can’t talk to you anymore.”

“Whose fault is that?” She sat up and looked down at him. “Talk to me. If that’s the problem, just talk to me.”

Spike looked up at her. “I miss you,” he said. “And you scare me.”

“I... I scare you.”

He nodded. “You didn’t used to, but you do now.” He rolled over and pulled her down with him, to look into her eyes. “I want you to look at me and see someone,” he said. “Not a vampire who spent over a century as the scourge of Europe, I want you to see me.”

“I do see you.”

“Do you see a frightened Victorian poet dropped in the middle of the twenty-first century, with a lifetime of nightmares and a wife who could rip his limbs off? Because that’s where I am. I’m supposed to be reveling in the novelty of Christmas trees and discussing the sanctity of the marital bed. Instead I’m wandering dark streets full of cars and everything scares me. And you....”

“What about me?” Buffy said. “I love you, okay? I fell in love with you when you were just the demon, I can make it work when you’re just the man.”

“At what cost?” Spike asked. “You could never love Xander. You lowered yourself to love Riley. Now you’re fighting against what you know about me. I’m not worthy of you. I’m just human, and not an exceptional one anymore.” He made a rueful noise. “Hell, you’d be better off with Xander. At least he doesn’t faint at the sight of blood.”

“That’s just psychology,” Buffy insisted. “I think you can get over that.”

“I think I don’t want to,” Spike said quietly. He caressed her face. “Buffy. Baby. I love you, but we don’t work anymore. And you know we don’t. That’s why you lied about Angel, that’s why you don’t talk to me. We’ve been over since I died, and it’s just taking us this long to admit it.”

Buffy was fighting tears now. “You didn’t die.”

“I died, Buffy,” he said. “And you know I did.”

She gave up the fight. “I didn’t want you to realize it.” She wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. “You were so happy,” she whimpered. “It was like a miracle to you, and then... then it just... became so clear....”

“I didn’t understand what it meant,” Spike said into her shoulder. “Not at first.” He pulled away. At first Buffy didn’t let him, until she realized the reason he was struggling. She was hurting him. She let go quickly.

He looked her over. “This isn’t your fault, love. But I’m not enough for you. And you’re too much for me.”

“I still love you.”

“I still love you. But it’s not working.”

Buffy sobbed. She didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t, but... it wasn’t.

“I think we need some time apart to figure out who we are now. I... I need someone I’m not gonna be afraid of. Or afraid for all the time. And you need someone worthy of you.”

“What if there is no one, huh?”

Spike smiled softly. “Then you can come over, and watch Pride and Prejudice with me and we’ll cry into our wine together. I’m not going away. It’s just we have to admit this isn’t working. We don’t go together, not anymore. But friends is good, yeah? Friends works. Can’t it?”

“You used to know how cruel that was to say,” Buffy said.

“Did I? Huh.” He took in a deep breath. “I think that was someone else.” He brushed at her hair. “And that’s the whole point, isn’t it, pet? It was all... someone else.” He kissed her nose. “I’ll move out tomorrow.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“You’ve been missing me since it happened.”

Buffy snuggled in beside him. “I guess love isn’t always enough, is it.”

“Never is,” he said.

 

***

 

Buffy wrenched herself away. “Okay, this is just getting sadistic,” she insisted. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it! I refuse to think this is our destiny, no matter what we do.”

Spike, unfortunately, was reeling from that one. It hit too close to home. He’d thought he’d won with the miracle. But that even the miracle would make the world crumble beneath them... the thought was staggering.

“Spike,” she cried out. “Spike, fight it, dammit!”

Spike could barely hear her. Grief was fogging his senses. Futility. Fighting was futile. Living was futile. Love was–

“Spike!” Buffy rolled around the tendrils and made herself fall, landing on her lover as the vision clouded his eyes. She wrenched them from his face with her teeth, and he gasped as reality struck again. A low growl began in his throat, and she felt him flex beneath her, fighting against the psy-demon’s sticky webs.

“Help me,” Spike said. “The scythe.” She could feel his hands as he yanked at the tendrils around her, and she tried to grab for his. He had his hand on her scythe, and was trying to shift it to cut through the webs.

“You’re stubborn,” the demon said, tightening against them. “I’ve never had this much trouble before. Can’t you give up and accept the inevitable? Life ends! Love ends! There is no forever. You’re living a delusion, and all I’m doing is showing you that. Why can’t you admit that there is no way to win in this world?”

“What’s winning look like?” Buffy said. “I never said winning was not dying. Neither one of us said that! The point is to play the game to the end, together.” Spike had shifted the scythe against her back, and she strained against the tendrils. Between the two of them, maybe they could free themselves. “You know what I want? What I dream? Here’s my damn destiny, you wicked bitch, and I’m gonna fight until my last breath to make it happen, and you just try and stop us.”

“Stop you from what?”

Buffy’s hand twisted, and she grabbed some of the tendrils all of her own volition. “You just try and stop me,” she said, and she bit down hard on the tendrils sneaking into her face.

The psy-demon yelled, but Spike was caught up anyway. There were no miracles to Buffy’s vision. No magic. No ever-after. It was just... the end.


	6. Aged

_ They will have _

 

_ Aged.  _

  
  


   An old woman lives in a small house by the seaside. She wakes in the early afternoon, as she stays up very late at night most of the time. She seems quite spry, but age weighs heavy on her delicate skin. Liver spots have bloomed on her arms and hands. There was a time she was hale and healthy. There was a time when her blonde hair was only streaked with grey. There was a time when she was slow, but mobile. All of those days have passed.

   It hasn’t been for long, but things are different now. Now she wakes in the dimness of the curtained bedroom, and reaches her hand over to see if her companion is still there beside her on the bed.

   He is. Of course he is. He will never leave her.

   He opens his blue eyes in the dimness and smiles at her. “You awake, love?”

   “Yes,” she says. Her voice is paper thin.

   “Let’s get you to the loo,” he says simply. He rolls out of the bed and slips on some jeans before going to her side. He lifts her in his arms like a new bride, his strength an asset he’s never cherished as strongly as he does these days. She doesn’t need a wheelchair (though she has one for outside trips. It mostly stays in the car.) She has him.

   He carries her to the toilet. She’s past feeling shame or modesty about this. She does what she can of her business there while he draws some water into the bath. Gently he removes her nightdress, and then he lifts her into the warm water.

   They talk as they go through this. What the weather is going to be like, the color of the flowers he’s placed on the sideboard (for exactly this purpose), whether or not they should wash her hair today. They decide against it.

   He bathes her with a natural sponge, along her neck, under her arms, beneath her wasted breasts, with tender strokes making sure she’s clean of all sweat or grime or other accumulations. It’s sensual, in its way, but these ministrations haven’t been sexual for a long time. And that’s okay.

   She’s still the woman he loves.

   He’s become different, himself. Gone is the bleached hair, the cocksure manner, the torment in his eyes. A sort of tender peace has descended on him in the last few years, even more so in the last months, as she has gone from a spry old lady to something fragile and... well, helpless.

   He lays a large bath sheet on the closed toilet, lifts her from the water, sets her down and wraps her in it. She hums gently as he rubs her dry, curled up against him, her head resting on his shoulder. “There you go, love,” he says. Still wrapped in the towel he scoops her up, carries her to her bed, and leaves her sitting on the edge as he picks out her wardrobe for the day.

   Loose pants and blouses that button and sweaters that go around her shoulders so he can dress her easily. That’s what she wears these days, but he’s been careful about materials. Silk shirts if he can find them. And soft chenille, and clean, crisp cotton. He wants what swathes the skin of his beloved to be as beautiful and sensual as she is.

   Even as she is.

   The sun has sunk low over the ocean by now, so he opens the curtains, letting in a view of the hills behind the house. He can only gaze upon the ocean in the mornings, as in the evenings the sun bears down on the sea and would sear him to ashes. He cannot let that happen. Because if nothing else was true in this world, he’s needed now.

   There was a time he hated seeing anyone he loved wasting away, but this wasn’t illness. This wasn’t pain. It was simply age, and since the alternative was unthinkable, he loved it for what it was.

   She had come to accept it as all do. She had what she needed. And for all her withered skin and sagging body, she loved him. And she knew, through all his patience and devotion and all the little things he did, that he loved her.

   After dressing her he carries her to the living room. He lights a fire in the glass fronted wood stove, because she grows cold easily, even on sunny days. He turns on the TV, and her watery green eyes wander from the dancing fire, to the flickering images, to gazing at her erstwhile lover’s pale, unchanging face.

   All of them are fascinating in their own right.

   The house is cozy. Weaponry hangs in pride of place on the walls, but the maces are dusty, the swords unsharpened, and they have long misplaced the arrows for the crossbows. Stakes are still kept all anyhow by the kitchen sink and in the drawer by the front door (they’re not stupid) but slaying days are well behind them. And that’s okay, too. The great scythe was passed on to another slayer long ago, and is being used for its intended purpose. Someone is out there slaying the evildoer. But it’s not her.

   And right now, it’s not him, either. Because really, his days are full.

   He brushes out her thin grey hair, and braids it behind her. He prepares a meal, washes the dishes, does some light housework. He sorts through the mail, makes some phone calls to her doctors and some friends.

   There are a lot of friends.

   The living room is filled with photographs, on the mantel, on shelves, some collages on walls. Slayers, Scoobies, first, second, and now third generation. Baby pictures. Family portraits. Christmas and greeting cards are slipped into some of the Venetian blinds. “To the best Mom ever,” says one. “Faithful friends forever,” says another. One has a funky picture of a humorous looking elf. Another is a dark and moody art print. One is a handmade monstrosity with stickers and a child’s scrawl.

   Their life has been full. They live alone now because it is their choice. Peace is all that she craves these days. Peace, and certainty.

   And he provides that.

   He keeps white rats these days, as it’s easier than sending out for blood. When night falls and his hunger grows he goes to the cages in the basement, tends the breeding tanks filled with mama rats and their pinkies, checks the feed and water on the sex-separated larger cages, and selects three larger males for his supper. He takes them upstairs and kills them deftly, so swiftly they don’t even squeak. The blood is drained into a wine glass, and he partakes after making her another meal.

   He has to feed her. She can grip a spoon, but her hands shake. It’s easier to just lift the utensils for her. It, too, is sensual in its way.

   She doesn’t eat much.

   They don’t turn the television back on. Huddled before the wood stove, she asks him to read to her, and he does. She closes her eyes and listens to his voice. She doesn’t really care what he reads. She has a hard time following it, anyway, as her mind wanders these days, but she loves to listen to his voice. His tastes wander. Sometimes children’s books, or Victorian novels, or bad romances, or BDSM erotica. Tonight he has chosen poetry, but it could just as easily have been horror or mystery.   
  
_“At the last, tenderly,_ _  
__From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,_ _  
__From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,_ _  
___Let me be wafted.”

 

   He reads from Walt Whitman, his accent smoothing the words, caressing her ears with them, softly, steadily, still in love with the English language. 

  
“ _Let me glide noiselessly forth;_ _  
_ _With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,_ _  
__Set ope the doors, O Soul!_ __  
  


_ Tenderly! be not impatient!” _

   He stops and looks up at her. She seems to be half asleep. If not completely asleep already. If not…. 

   He doesn’t want to read the last words. They bother him. 

_(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!_ _  
__Strong is your hold, O love.)_

   Then she opens her watery eyes. 

   “Is the moon out?” she asks.

   “Should be.” He checks outside.

   The moon is shining near full, and the stars are clear around it. The sound of the surf grows louder as he opens the door. “Gorgeous night.”

   “Take me out?” she asks.

   He smiles. “I’ll take you dancing.”

   He buttons up her sweater and wraps her in a throw from the couch. Then he scoops her up again and carries her gently out into the night.

   The ocean hisses against the shore, glittering in the light of the moon, a sea of stars beneath a sea of stars. The world is awash in silver and blue, the colors of the night, walking in beauty like the night. He does dance with her, delicately, spinning her as he walks on the sand, and she laughs her crackling, aged laugh, and rests her head on his shoulder.

   “Give me the stars?” she asks.

   “Of course, pet.”

   He carries her across the sand to a large driftwood tree which has yet to be snatched up by the tide. It’s been there for the last three years, ever since they had moved to this place. It’s likely it will last until some storm finally shakes it loose. Sand gathers around it, making a little hollow protected from the wind. It’s their favorite spot. When she was still mobile they’d build little fires by it, and take the visiting guests and children there for picnics and such. Now he mostly brings her there himself, and they lie in the hollow and watch the stars wheel overhead.

   He lays her down, her head on a rise in the sand, tucking the blanket warmly about her. He sits beside her for a while, but eventually lays down, resting his head on her breast, listening to her still beating heart. It’s faint these days. The doctors say her blood pressure is low. He loves listening to it anyway.

   She looks up at the stars, wondering if she’ll see any shooting ones. She hasn’t for years. Her eyes aren’t what they once were. “Do you remember?” she asks. “We used to watch the stars.”

   He looks up. “Out on the back porch,” he says. “When I was still half mad, and the soul was still raw in my breast.”

   She rolls her eyes. “You’re still a bad poet.”

   “And you’re still a prissy bitch.”

   “Evil vampire.”

   “Beautiful slayer.”

   She chuckles. Her mind is wandering. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it, you know,” she says. “You didn’t mean to hurt me.”

   He stops, and smiles sadly. “Never meant to hurt you.”

   “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she says. “It was ugly, but so beautiful.” Something connects. “Am I beautiful?”

   “Yes.” He shifts beside her. “I remember arching over you,” he says, “being inside you, feeling you beneath me, above me, surrounding me. You’re still there, love. It goes on forever.”

   “Like you?”

   He shrugs. “I’ve aged, too.”

   He has. He’s softer, slower, quieter. More philosophical. Less violent. Sometimes he still gets a wild hair and goes out for a slay, or he used to. But as the soul has had time to mellow into the demon, the demon has softened around it. And lately, he’s been needed for other things.

   Still, she hesitates before she asks. “Would you kiss me?”

   He reaches up, kissing her thin lips with his cool ones. She remembers when her lips were full and eager. She is so different these days. “Why do you still love me?” she whispers.

   “Because I come alive when I’m with you,” he whispers back. “That’s the only way I live. With you.”

   She thinks about this.

   “Hold me,” she says.

   He does. He lays his head on her chest and listens to her heart, and she breathes slowly and carefully, as if counting her breaths, watching the stars inch across the sky.

   It isn’t until his breath comes quietly and slowly and she knows he’s fallen asleep that she stops counting breaths, or breathing carefully, or even breathing at all. A quiet gurgle, too soft to wake him, is the last sound she makes as her final breath leaves her body.

   Two dead creatures rest upon the shore, content in each other as the world slowly turns its way toward morning. When dawn breaks, will there be a funeral pyre? Will their friends and family come visiting in a few days to find an empty cottage, cages of abandoned rats, and burned bones washed clean by the rain? Or will he wake before the sun catches him? 

    It doesn’t matter. Her soul’s passed on, and what happens next is simply... whatever happens next.

***

 

   Both Spike and Buffy were in tears as the vision ended, but there was such peace, such tranquility in the sorrow. And there was the difference. It was sorrow. Not despair. Their eyes locked as the possibility, and the inevitability, hit them like a wave of the sea.  

   And the demon retched.

   “No!” She struggled against them, and the tendrils of her fingers retreated, sliding down their bodies, releasing them from her grip. “What... what have you done?”

   Buffy finally grabbed her scythe from her back and twirled as the demon stepped away, choking, sobbing, struggling against what seemed an attack of acute nausea.

   “How? How have you...? Ah!” She flailed, struggling against the loss, whipping at them once more with her fingers, but all they suffered were brief impressions.

_    Spike, chained in a basement, struggling against madness as his soul eats into his mind. _

   Gone.

_    Buffy, alone, retreating into alcoholism and cold humor as loneliness corrodes her from within after Spike is dust. _

   Banished.

_    The two of them tortured as a mutual enemy more powerful than both of them torments them into turning on each other. _

   Dismissed.

   Buffy cringed against the brief impressions, but she knew the creature’s weakness now. It fed upon despair. All she needed do was spoil the milk. Hope. Love. Possibility. Even acceptance. Anything that was not despair was an emotion the psi-demon could not stomach.

   “We’re strong,” she said, pushing forward. “We’ve grown. We’ve learned. We know what it means to be us.”

   “And we won’t let you end it with bleak visions of possible,” Spike added, batting away the last of the tendrils. “We know what’s possible.”

   “Yeah,” Buffy said, striding forward. “We know exactly what’s possible. Good and bad. And we won’t let it beat us!”

   “I don’t... I didn’t....” The creature coughed and struggled away. “No. Please.”

   “You want mercy, you sicko?” Buffy snapped. “Keep your nasty vision paws off our future!”

   The scythe came down, and with a single movement, both the psi-demon’s vision-inducing hands went flying across the tent, to hit with a muffled thump against the canvas, landing in a worthless heap on the ground.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem is The Last Invocation, by Walt Whitman. It is the poem my grandfather died listening to.


	7. Future Continuous

 

_ We mainly use the  _ **_ Future Continuous _ ** _ tense to indicate that we will be in the middle of doing something in a specified time in the future. e.g. We will be okay. _

  
  


   There was surprisingly little blood. It was red, like a human’s, not black or blue or yellow like some of the more unearthly demons. The veins had snapped and shrunk elasticlike into the flesh, sealing the blood away. It surprised Buffy when Spike jumped forward and, rather than issuing a  _ coup de grace _ , took the scarf from off the demon’s neck and deftly bandaged the stumps of her hands.

   The psi-demon was staring down at her empty wrists in shock. “What... what have you done?”

   “What have  _ you _ done?” Buffy asked. “How many thousands have you murdered with those visions?”

   “I told you!” the demon snapped. “I never killed anyone!” And she burst into tears. “It’s not my fault what they do after.”

   “Do you even care what you do to people, showing them these hellscapes?”

   “I don’t know what I showed you,” the demon said. “I told you. I don’t make this stuff up, it comes from you. Your mind, your destiny, whatever it is. I just hold the veil over your eyes, you’re the only one who sees it.”

   “Spike, just—”

   “Just hold still,” Spike said to the demon. “Keep these up above your heart, and your head if you can, and we’ll get them properly treated, yeah?”

   “You might as well kill me,” the demoness said. “I’ll starve to death without—” And her sobbing increased.

   Buffy grabbed the collar of Spike’s coat and dragged him over to talk to her. “What on earth are you doing?”    

   “Look, she’s not a killer, she’s just got a weird diet, yeah? Isn’t her fault she needs despair to live. She was born this way.”

   “So we send her off to drive more people to suicide?”

   “You cut her fangs off, love, she’s harmless now,” Spike said. “Look, burn her hands, and she won’t be able to hurt anyone, yeah? She’s all chipped up and safe.”

   “After what she did to us, you want her to live?”

   “What’d she do?” Spike said. “Showed us what we already knew?”

   Buffy stared. He had a point.

   “But people died,” she said, feeling more reluctant now. She had a hard time letting revenge go when her future with her lovers was threatened. “Why are you being all protect-the-demon?”

   “Lost my hands once,” Spike said, reminding her of an incident she had not been present for. “It’s punishment enough.”

   “I still don’t like her.”

   “You might as well let her kill me!” the demon sobbed at Spike’s back.

   Spike bent back down to her, and put pressure on the small amount of bleeding that was soaking through the bandage. “Why do you say that?” he asked. “Do you need your hands to bring the despair in order to eat it?”

   “Well... well, no, but... but... humans are so happy all the time.”

   “You’re in the wrong place,” Spike said. “You’re in a god damn Saturday Market, hub of buying and sunny days and farm fresh produce. Buffy’s about to call an ambulance, take you to hospital. Wander the halls of the oncology ward, see what you can find in a nursing home or a homeless shelter or sommat. Trust me, there’s plenty of despair out there if you just go looking for it.”

   “Have you ever had to hunt without a weapon?” the demon asked.

   “Yeah,” Spike said. “You can do it. I’ll help. Here, this is my cell phone number.” He scribbled it on a scrap of paper and stuffed it into the demon’s shirt. “Call me any time, and I’ll give you advice. If a vampire can get blood without being able to hurt anyone, you can figure out despair without your, what’d you call it, veil? You can manage.”

   The demon looked scared. Her head sank and she continued to cry, but her sobs slowed.

   “Buffy?”

   “You sure a hospital can help her?” Buffy asked. “She’s not human.”

   “Wrist physiology looks human enough,” Spike said. He was in all kinds of positions to know.  “And it’ll get her a good jump on finding her next meal.”

   Buffy sighed, rolled her eyes, and whipped out her cell phone. It sometimes bugged her when Spike showed more humanity than she herself felt. She’d never admit it, but sometimes she missed when he was soulless and would just shrug and let her be callous about things like this. She was feeling bloodthirsty. Just like when she went after Faith, or hunted down those suckers who had been servicing Riley, she didn’t care if there were shades of grey about the demoness’s evil. She’d threatened to break up her and her lover. She wanted the bitch to  _ burn _ .

   Twenty minutes later, Spike and Buffy were left alone in the demoness’s tent, ceremoniously burning her hands in one of her larger incense holders. The smell of the incense was now laced with the smell of burning demonic meat. Buffy was experimenting with yanking on a finger she’d cut off, watching it stretch and then curl back in to looking human again.

   “Buffy, it’s not a sodding party popper.”

   “It’s interesting.”

   “Come on, love, you’re reminding me of Dru. Just put the thing out of its misery.”

   Buffy glared, but dropped the finger into the incense holder, where it slowly caught like the others. “Not like you were particularly helpful about the whole thing,” she said. “Getting EMTs into the mix.”

   “And you handled that brilliantly, too,” Spike said.

   “I had to tell them  _ something. _ ”

   Spike raised an eyebrow. “They  _ fell off, _ ” Spike said. “Her hands  _ fell off.  _ You know they didn’t believe you.”

   “Well, she wasn’t talking.”

   “You left her no choice! What was she supposed to say? ‘Yeah, I let them be sacrificed to the Slayer in exchange for my life because I’m a despair-eating psi-demon?’ What was she supposed to do but agree?”

   “‘After I tortured her and her lover with them, and drove countless people to suicide,’” Buffy snapped. “She’s damned lucky I didn’t take her head off, instead of just her hands.”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “You always get shirty like this when you leave them alive.”

   “I do not!” Buffy snapped. “And I still don’t think that’s even a word.”

   “You get sullen after a kill, and shirty when you leave ‘em living, you know you do.”

   “And you got weird,” Buffy said. “Killing her would have been cleaner.” She frowned into the smoldering incense holder. “I’m a slayer, not a maimer.”

   “Buffy.”

   “No, it reminds of Riley,” Buffy said. “Of Walsh and the Initiative. Like rather than just cleaning demons out of the way, I’m trying to force them to be what I want them to be. I’m... I’m not that.”

   Spike watched her for a long moment as she stared, troubled, into the greasy flames. “So are we gonna talk about it?”

   Buffy closed her eyes.

   Spike came up and put his hand on her arm. “She brought it all up, didn’t she.”

   “It’s not fair,” she said quietly. “I can know we’re doomed and still enjoy it for a while, can’t I?”

   “Who says we’re doomed?”

   “We did,” Buffy said, looking up at him. “Isn’t that what she said? That she doesn’t make the visions, she just brings them up? Our destiny or whatever?” She closed her eyes again, cringing. “It’s not fair.”

   “Life isn’t fair,” Spike said. “But life keeps going, yeah, isn’t that what that last vision proved?”

   “That last one,” Buffy said. “That one was... forced. You don’t really think we’ll get there, do you?” She pulled away and faced him. “Think about it. Yeah, there is that possibility, which is like... best case scenario. Dying in my sleep a wrinkled old woman with fat grandkids sending us Christmas cards. However the fuck we got those, adoption or whatever. But we’re not going to get there, are we?”

   “Who says?”

   “Every other idea,” Buffy said. “One of us dies, or we make the wrong choice, and the status quo changes even just a little bit and it’s clear we’re just... we’re doomed, aren’t we?” She was struggling with tears suddenly. “And then there we’ll be, with ugly pain and death and grief and with the horror, and it isn’t fair, it always gets taken away from me, and I– we –”

   “Hey, shh, now,” Spike said, pulling her in against his chest. “Don’t let it eat at you.”

   She sobbed quietly against him for a minute. “Can’t help it,” she said. “It’s gonna end, and I’m gonna be all alone and I’ll miss you. Or you’ll miss me. And there’s no way out of it, it all ends so ugly....”

   “Who says?” Spike asked again. “She didn’t show us endings. She just showed new beginnings, again and again.”

   “Huh?”

   Spike had been surprisingly buoyed by Buffy’s last vision of their possible future. That she wasn’t afraid of aging, that she was sure Spike would stay by her side regardless of the inevitable, that death didn’t have to be horror and violence. It gave him hope. Yes, it had been Buffy’s vision, but it didn’t seem to be the one she was holding. Buffy could fight. She was better at fighting than he was. But when it came to hope for her own future, she had a hard time holding on to it.

   “Well, every one of those visions had a hope to it.”

   “What are you talking about? Wasting away as a ghost and a chronically depressed vampire in some dingy little apartment for all eternity?”

   “Eternity’s a long time, even the building wouldn’t have lasted that long,” Spike said. “That wasn’t the end.”

   “Sure felt like an end to me. A grim one.”

   “Yeah, well, you’re not used to living forever. Look, eventually, something was gonna happen that would shake us out of that rut. In the meantime, we had each other, whatever state we were in. I mean, yeah, sad, but there’s no way that was the end.”

   “What about the other ones?”

   Spike nodded. “Granted, I didn’t much like being a toasted marshmallow, but we don’t know what happened after that.”

   “You were dust!”

   “And... maybe in heaven, maybe not, maybe just gone. I don’t care what happens to me. You know that. It’s you I care about.”

   “And I was miserable!”

   “But you weren’t dead yet,” Spike said. He cupped her cheek. “One of us has to keep on living, and it’s you. That’s all that matters.”

   Buffy looked up at him. “I know death is inevitable,” she said. “Some day. But... us?”

   “We’re good.”

   “For now. But when something changed, we couldn’t....” She swallowed. “She made it clear. We couldn’t make it work.” She looked down. “Like Angel, like Riley. Like us before. It’s just doomed.”

   “Yeah, you already touched on it, love. Like us before. It didn’t work. Then something changed, and it worked. I got a soul, and after that, for whatever reason, we worked.” He shrugged. “So she showed us, if something changes again, it might not. When you were a vampire, and I was human, something wasn’t working. So we split up. We don’t know what would have happened after. Something else would have changed. Maybe vampire you would get ready for a soul, or human me would get turned back demon, or maybe we’d both just grow up a bit and decide we missed each other too much. That’s the whole point, right? We don’t know what would have happened.”

   “She made it pretty clear there wasn’t going to be a happy ever after.”

   “Well, there never will be, because so long as we keep doing our job right and the world keeps spinning, nothing ever ends. It just keeps changing, yeah?”

   Buffy stared up at him. “Since when were you the optimist?”

   “Since you burst into tears,” Spike said. “I’ll break down, and you can be the optimist next time.”

   Buffy chuckled, and Spike pulled her back into a hug.

   “I hated this,” Buffy said. “Hated it.” She clutched him tightly. “I see why they all killed themselves, it's scary thinking about what could happen.”

   “But we fought hard,” Spike said. “You fought hard. And if all those visions said anything, it’s that we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

   “I guess so long as we decide to just keep going....”

   “Isn’t that what we’ve always decided?” Spike asked. “Besides, we’re probably both going to go out in a blaze of glory in the middle of some apocalypse or other, and it won’t bloody matter, will it?”

   “I guess.” She looked up. “In the meantime, I love you.”

   “I love you.” He kissed her nose, stepped away, and picked up his blanket. “Let’s go home.”

   “Oh, no!” Buffy said, standing staunchly before the entrance to the tent. “I am not having you walk home under a blanket in the noonday sun. Not today. I’m calling Xander, he’ll bring around the van.”

   Spike rolled his eyes. “Are you going to go cosseting me, now? I haven’t suddenly become a firebomb.”

   “You’ve always been one, Russell.”

   “Gimme a break, Charlie.”

   Buffy told Xander to bring the van to the Saturday Market, and call them when he got there. That way Spike would only have to walk half a block under his blanket. Spike put a cover on the incense burner, sealing away the charred remains of the demon’s vision-inducing veil. “You were really nice to her,” Buffy muttered when she was done with her call.

   “I had some fellow feeling,” Spike said. “Any hope of redemption. Gotta give a girl a chance.”

   “You sure she’s not just going to talk the guys in the oncology ward into suicide?”

   “Suicide didn’t seem to be her goal, you know. Just a byproduct of the whole thing. She seemed proud she’d never killed anyone.”

   Buffy sighed. “She still messed a bunch of people up.”

   Spike looked up. “Not us, though, right?”

   Buffy regarded him. He was what he was, soul and demon and everything. And she was alive, and the slayer, they worked together. She was absolutely ready to go home, go to bed with her soulful, merciful vampire man, snuggle up, and enjoy the present. They didn’t know what was going to happen in the future, but he was right. All they could do was continue on with the one thing that was absolutely certain.    
  
   “Nope,” she said, without a doubt left in her mind. “Not us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all for sticking with this depressing little fic. This last chapter was really tough to write, because I'm not feeling particularly hopeful myself right now, but I like to think that Spuffy continues on with hope.


End file.
